


Lux Aurumque

by Beleriandings



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, hopefully as canon compliant as it can be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-06-10 15:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6962779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hope of finding a way to get their original bodies back, Edward and Alphonse travel to investigate a rumour, of someone called the Golden Alchemist. Instead they find a cold grey river, where they meet a woman with powers they never even imagined were possible, who leads them to a strange new world. But can they get home when there is an enemy whose face they cannot see, while the shadows of the past are drawing ever closer?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Reports of something strange going on in the South_ , thought Ed bitterly, as he squinted into the strange, shifting grey light, eyes trying to pierce the gloom. Well, the Colonel hadn't been wrong in that, but _strange_ barely even began to cover it.

Fear began to creep through him with the cold as he turned his head, looking for Alphonse. _They had been next to each other just moments before, trying to understand that odd transmutation circle they had found_ … The fear grew clawing, irrational, and he transmuted his arm blade, almost wishing that he could see a real enemy to fight. As it was, Ed did not like this at all. This was too like before, the pale light reminding him painfully of that strange world where he had seen the Truth, and he half expected to see the Gates looming up at him out of the mist.

He did not though, and he frowned at that. There was no Gate here, no Truth. But no Alphonse, either. He could barely see further than his arm's reach. There was only the river, tugging at his legs - though a little less at his automail leg than the one of flesh and blood, he noted in some part of his mind that was intellectually curious about all this - and the _cold_ , that cold that seemed to be a chill not only of the body, but of the mind, of the soul.

" _Al?_ " Ed shouted, his voice falling curiously dead even as he struggled against the current that was twining around his legs, cold and insistent, as though it were a living thing, trying deliberately to trip him. "Alphonse!" He couldn't see his brother anywhere, and that filled him with more fear than the leaching cold, the compulsion that was coming over him to simply lie down and let the current carry him. Ed gritted his teeth and pushed that feeling to the back of his mind. _Not now. Not until Al was safe_. And after that he had to return, and he still had to get his brother's body back…

" _Alphonse, where are you?_ " He tried again, beginning to wade at right angles to the current. Wading was hard work, much harder than it should have been. He froze immediately, nearly stumbling in the current but righting himself just at the last moment, when he heard a sound.

It was a splashing, faint and indistinct, from beyond Ed's sight. Then, after a moment, there came a quiet voice, as though from a very long distance away.

"Brother? Is that you?"

"Al!" He smiled, despite himself. "Yeah, it's me. Are you okay?"

"I think so. Are you?"

"Yeah…"

"Where are you?"

"Here!"

"Where? And where are we?"

Ed hesitated for a moment. It was a good question. Where _were_ they? "I… I don't know. Follow my voice, and we'll… we'll work this out, find out how to get back…"

There was a splashing, and Ed tried to walk towards it himself, but he found himself strangely disorientated; indeed, he could barely tell the direction he was walking in. Realising he might be heading _away_ from Al for all he knew, Ed stopped to listen.

Suddenly there was more splashing, and then a new sound. There was a yell of something like alarm from Al, then a sharp clang of metal on metal, mingled with a sound unlike anything Ed had ever heard before.

"Al!" he yelled, cutting through the sound, yet still it went on and on, resounding to oddly in his ears that he shook his head, instinctively trying to rid himself of the sound in any way he could. The sound was strange. It was just about recognisable as the ringing of a bell, but it seemed lower, deeper than any bell Ed had heard before, filled with a strange undercurrent of _command_ , almost. It was a sound that held the listener in its thrall, held in place, body beyond their own control. Ed struggled against it, fighting both the compulsion and the pull of the river, the effort threatening to make him lose his balance and fall, even as the chill seeped into his very bones.

He heard Al shout out again, and a calm female voice speaking words that were nevertheless laced with power, as if some sort of invisible compulsion was filling the very air. "Who are you?"

 _Al can't draw transmutation circles here_ , realised Ed in sudden genuine fear, _and if there's a fight and he falls, the water could wash off his blood seal_ …. he gritted his teeth in frustration, cursing the dim, pallid light as he struggled to wade across to where he thought the sound came from. _Where are they?_

"I'm… A… Alphonse Elric." Al was answering the questioner, his voice almost sounding strangled, halting. "I'm a… I'm an alchemist."

"What are you doing here?" The voice did not seem to bear any malice, but Ed still felt a deep distrust for it. A voice filled with authority, some sort of commanding power that he didn't understand yet that bound almost physically, like chains.

"Don't tell her anything Al!" he shouted, struggling harder against the water's pull. He turned to where he thought that stranger's voice had come from. "You! Tell us who _you_ are! What do you want with us?"

Immediately he felt the focus of the compulsion shift, and realised in the same moment that he had only been caught up in the echoing edge of it before; he had not felt the full force of that - well, he hated to call it a _spell_ , but he couldn't think of any other word right now, not with the full force of it and that calm, neutral voice resounding in his head - but now the sound slammed into him, catching him up in its grip.

Immediately Ed fought back, without thinking, trying to push back with his mind even as he lashed out with his arm, despite the lack of a visible enemy.

He met resistance on both counts. He was struggling in his mind with that unknown force, even as he felt, to his surprise, the blade on his arm meet metal with a jarring impact that ran all the way through his body as he misjudged the distance and the force behind the blow. There was a sword looming up out of the greyness, wielded by a figure whose face was hidden.

Immediately Ed fell back, feet caught suddenly by the current again, while his attention had been elsewhere.

"Brother!" shouted Al, his voice rising in fear. "Don't - "

But that was all he heard, for after a moment he had lost his balance and was falling into the water, his feet pulled from under him by the current and the unseen ground beneath, which suddenly seemed less even than before.

Then the cold was hitting his body, water filling his mouth and nose as the current dragged him eagerly beneath the water. Ed was a good swimmer, but this was unlike anywhere he had ever swum before; the water seemed to have a will of its own, twisting and eager, and then there was the cold that seemed to sap his strength by the moment, forcing the air from his lungs even as it numbed his body. He could feel his clothes and his automail weighing him down, making him weaker. _Had it been this deep before?_ He was certain it hadn't. He struggled to bring his hands together, trying to transmute something, anything, but even that small motion seemed beyond him suddenly.

He could not longer hear voices, either Al's or the stranger's. All he could hear was the water, mixed with the panicked roaring of his blood pounding in his ears. _Soon to stop forever_ …

Suddenly he felt a tug at the collar of his coat, lifting, pulling him up. Golden tendrils of light were twining around him too, drawing him upwards. For a moment he struggled against them, until he realised they were warm, and their touch was a balm, easing the burning ice that seemed to constrict his chest, letting him breath. And he _was_ breathing, Ed realised in that moment; though his hair was plastered wet to his face, his head was above water and he was gulping great lungfuls of air, between coughing out gouts of water.

Then a hand was pushing back the hair from his face, a gentle hand, imbued with that soothing, healing warmth he had felt. The other hand was holding him by the collar, helping him onto his hands and knees with the water flowing around him. But its chill didn't seem so great now, not with that golden light warming him, running through his blood and bringing back a little of his strength.

He looked into the face of his rescuer with trepidation, blinking hair from his eyes. His gaze met that of a woman, her face paper-pale and surrounded by black hair, a little silver-grey running through it. She looked about their teacher's age or a little older he thought, and something about her reminded him of Izumi in general, though they only looked superficially alike. The golden light, he realised next, was welling from her hands, and there was a strange mark on her forehead that glowed with that same light, incongruously warm and bright in this cold, flat-grey world. She was holding Al's head in one hand, the red glow that usually lit his eyes when it was attached to his armour body now dark. She was looking between Al's head and Ed, dark eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"But you're just a child!" she exclaimed as their gazes met, her eyes going wide with surprise.

"I'm the F-Fullmetal Alchemist" choked Ed, coughing up water and raising his automail arm with its blade at once, immediately distrustful. Her voice was the one that had spoken before, although now it was simply a voice, free of the compelling power that had filled it earlier. "Give my brother Al back his head! And where's his body? What've you done with him?"

"I'm here!" said Al, looming up out of the mist and kneeling down beside them. The pull of the river barely seemed to affect him, Ed thought in some surprise. "Brother, this lady saved you! Be polite!"

Ed looked up at the woman. For a long moment she stared between them. Then she smiled, slowly handing Al back his head, then pulling back her gloved hands, showing that they were empty, raising them in a gesture of tentative peace though her face was still wary. The mark on her forehead had stopped glowing golden too, and had faded now so that it was barely visible now, half-hidden by her hair. She wore a leather bandoleer across her chest, which Ed stared at for a moment, wondering about the seven pouches with their downward pointing handles. For there seemed to be some power in them that he did not understand. They made him a little uneasy without knowing why.

Al took his head and placed it back on his body, eyes glowing their usual red again. That sight always left Ed with an instinctive sense of relief.

"Thank you, Ma'am" said Al, nodding politely, even as Ed scowled.

"Who are you, anyway?" 

"My name is Sabriel" she said. "I mean you no harm. I apologise for trying to spell you and your brother; I thought you a dead spirit-form."

Ed blinked. "A what?"

"Something Dead" Sabriel said, helping Ed up, leaning on her on one side with Al on the other. To manage it, he had to transmute his arm back to normal, and though he would have felt better with his blade there for immediate use, it wasn't to be helped. Sabriel's eyes lingered on his arm at the blue crackle of light brightening the gloom, but although she allowed a slight, questioning frown to cross her face, she did not comment. "I know now that you are not a threat" she said, helping him to walk, back into the current. "Just _what_ the two of you are, I have yet to ascertain. But I think that's a conversation best had back in Life, don't you?"

"Life?" said Ed, nonplussed.

"Rather than Death" said Sabriel, gesturing around her with her free arm, which still held her unsheathed sword. The blade glimmered with that same golden light that had brought the warmth back to his body, symbols seeming to run up and down the blade, flowing like liquid. The light was reassuring, but it still made Ed nervous.

"Lady, if you're messing us around…"

"I'm doing nothing of the kind, I promise."

"She's not" said Al. "I think she's right. This is Death. Don't… don't you feel it, brother?" There was a clatter of metal as Al lifted up his arms, wrapping them close about himself as though the very air was pressing in on him. "I don't know what it is about this place, but there's something… it's not… it's not _alive_. And…" he glanced off downstream, to where the river vanished into the swirling grey mist. "And if we went that way, I… I don't think we could come back."

"….Yeah." Ed hated to say it, but he had to admit his brother was right about the feeling this place gave him. "Then…" he said in a small voice, turning to Sabriel, "are Al and I… are we… _dead_?"

" _No_ , actually" she said, not turning back or slowing her pace as she waded upstream. "You two are very much alive, which is only a part of the reason none of this makes sense. Now, if we just…"

She stopped, drawing the brothers to a halt too. She leaned forward a little, almost as though she were listening, and then carried on forward, pulling them along with her.

The question Ed was about to ask died in his throat. Warmth. Warmth broke across his face and he nearly cried out in relief at the feeling. Beside him he heard Al make a noise of surprise, for the scene around them had completely changed.

They were at the edge of what looked like a forest, grass beneath their feet instead of water. At first Ed thought Sabriel had disappeared, until he wheeled around and saw that she was behind them, shaking her head and wiping from her face the layer of frost that appeared to cover her whole body, already melting. There was someone beside her, a younger woman, similar enough to Sabriel to be a close relative, Ed thought.

"- just _appeared_ when you returned…" the other woman was saying, her voice high and quick with alarm. She was gesturing at the two of them with an unsheathed sword. "…out of nothing, and there's no frost on them or anything, so they must have been able to travel into Death bodily, but I didn't even know that was _possible_ , except for…" she tailed off, looking at the two of them doubtfully.

"I don't know that it _is_ possible" said Sabriel, turning to look at them too, cocking her head thoughtfully. The other woman seemed fearful, her sword held up in a guard position, but Sabriel merely looked curious. "It's alright, Lirael" she said to the other, who lowered her sword, but did not sheath it, face still suspicious. Sabriel seemed to be thinking aloud as she regarded them. "There is no Charter magic in them, but no Free magic either, as far as I can see. I would have said no magic at all, but for…" she broke off. "They are not Dead things, that's for certain. The one in the armour is particularly intriguing; the armour is empty, with no actual body inside, but it doesn't bear any of the usual hallmarks of necromancy. It's interesting that they came through looking the same, not many spirit forms can do that…"

"Isn't anyone going to tell us what's going on?" demanded Ed. He had just noticed that his hair and clothes were quite dry, despite having being sodden after his fall into the river, mere minutes ago. _That river that had now inexplicably vanished, as though it had never existed_ … "What is this place? Where are we?"

Lirael gave him an odd look. "You're on the edge of the woods, north of Roble's Town and a stone's throw from the west bank of the Ratterlin" she said. She narrowed her eyes, looking at them closely as though trying to gauge their reaction to this, but Ed had no idea of what she was expecting to see.

"I'm sorry, but we don't know where that is" said Al, inclining his head apologetically. "We've only just come here, you see."

"Are you from Belisaere then?"

The brothers exchanged a look. Ed frowned back at Lirael. "Belisaere? Never heard of it. Is that a town?"

"…"

"Belisaere is a city. The capital of the Old Kingdom" put in Sabriel, a question in her voice, behind her words. "Are you two…" she cast about for the right words, keeping her voice carefully neutral, "from elsewhere?"

"The Old Kingdom… elsewhere… you mean this place isn't even part of Amestris?" asked Al.

It was Sabriel and Lirael's turn to exchange a look. "No" said Sabriel after a moment. "No, it's certainly not."

"Amestris?" asked Lirael quietly, speaking more to Sabriel than to Ed and Al. "I've never heard of that. It's not on any map I've ever seen, certainly."

"Mmm." Sabriel nodded, thoughtfully. "How did you get here?" she asked the brothers. "What were you doing, I mean?"

Ed met Al's gaze, wondering how much they should tell these strangers. They didn't seem a threat, and Sabriel had saved him earlier after all, _but the younger one - Lirael - still held her sword_ …

"We were investigating a rumour" said Al. "About someone called the Golden Alchemist." He hesitated for a moment more, and said, "we thought maybe they might have a way to get our original bodies back."

Ed grimaced at the memory. A rumour of a house in the woods, a man and two children who disappeared twenty years ago. Vague, certainly, and not the sort of thing the military - or the brothers - usually troubled themselves with.

But there was also a name tied to it all, somehow.

 _The Golden Alchemist_.

It was on the strength of rumour and the pretext of investigating the disappearances that Mustang had finally sent them to investigate; even if he hadn't, Ed knew they would have gone anyway. _The Golden Alchemist_ … it was barely more than a local legend, but the name was certainly suggestive; it could almost be the name of a state alchemist, though not one of whom there was ever any record, they had learned.

And _gold_ … the symbol of immortality, of life and light.

 _Of the Philosopher's Stone_.

Ed put these thoughts from his mind, lest his face betray him, and focussed on the conversation at hand once more.

"Getting your original bodies back?" Lirael was asking. "Then you mean those aren't… I mean…"

"Oh, yes, we were born like this" snapped Ed sarcastically, irritated now. He thrust out his automail hand into the space between them, to let them see. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Brother…" began Al.

"Oh, of course, you were born like that, that's funny" Lirael said, sheathing her sword and removing the glove on her right hand. She seemed calm enough, but there was a catch in her voice. "Because I wasn't." She held out her hand too, and Ed suddenly saw that it was not flesh but some sort of golden automail. But no, that wasn't automail, he realised; the mechanism was different, more finely jointed, the plates minute and fitting closely together. _Winry would kill to get a look at that_ , the thought immediately came to him, but he pushed it aside, trying to concentrate.

The hand clearly wasn't just metal, either. That same golden light that he had seen before seemed to light it, binding the structure together, more strange markings like the ones he had seen on Sabriel and Lirael's swords and on their foreheads swimming across the metal's surface like a delicate, shimmering film of oil on water.

For a moment he was caught off-guard, and had no idea what to say. Then the tips of their fingers met in the space between them, bumping each other gently, and Lirael drew back, subsiding and putting her glove back on with a grimace. "Sorry" she murmured, and Ed got the feeling that painful memories were passing through her mind.

Well, he knew that feeling well enough at least.

"So" mused Sabriel, breaking the silence after a moment. "Something happened, and you lost an arm, and a leg…"

"How did you know about the leg?"

"Call it experience in Charter Magic" she said. "Flesh and blood reacts differently to the spell I used to seal your life in, when I lifted you from the river."

 _She really is a lot like Teacher_ , thought Ed, making a mental note not to underestimate this Sabriel. "I lost my arm and leg in the East area civil war, back at home in our country" he said, his usual lie.

"That's not true and we both know it" said Sabriel, pursing her lips.

Ed opened his mouth in surprise, but Sabriel had already turned her attention to Al. "And you lost your entire body, somehow." Her voice was brisk, as though considering a simple intellectual problem.

"Is that… possible?" asked Lirael doubtfully.

"Well, apparently so." Sabriel looked at them keenly for a long moment, her black eyes questing, before she sighed. "Ah, where are my manners? We have not even properly introduced ourselves. I am Abhorsen Sabriel, Queen consort of the Old Kingdom, and this is my sister Lirael, Abhorsen-in-Waiting, Remembrancer and Daughter of the Clayr."

Ed blinked, wondering if any of this was supposed to mean something to him, before realising that they expected him to introduce them in return. But before he could do so, Al was speaking.

"This is Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist. I'm Alphonse Elric, his little brother. Pleased to meet you."

Sabriel smiled faintly. "Pleased to meet you too" she said, with a slight bow that Lirael repeated. Ed bowed along with Al, when his brother elbowed him in the ribs.

Still massaging the place where Al's rather sharp elbow plate had dug in, he frowned up at the two sisters, wondering what Sabriel was doing.

Lirael seemed to be wondering the same thing. "Sabriel, what if they _are_ necromancers though? I don't know what an alchemist is, but that's not something you can do with Charter magic…" she gestured at Al and her face twitched, and Ed got the impression her words carried an unspoken implication that he did not understand.

Sabriel clearly did though, dropping her voice to a half-whisper. "They were in Death without bells. No necromancer would risk it."

"Not even magically cloaked bells?"

"I would have been able to feel the spell."

"Panpipes?"

"I don't think so" said Sabriel, inclining her head. "Like I said, there's no Free magic in them either."

"Magic? Death?" scoffed Ed. "Cut the crap. What sort of alchemy is that you're using?" He gestured at the marks on the sword, on Lirael's golden hand. He had never even seen a transmutation circle on someone's _forehead_ before, nor a mark like that anywhere else, _but what else could it be but a transmutation circle?_ It must a form of alchemy he hadn't seen before and didn't understand, and now that the initial shock of his rescue had worn off, curiosity began to get the better of him. _And there was always the hope that anything new could be the way to get their bodies back_...

"Alchemy? No, it's Charter magic."

"There's no such thing as magic" said Ed, rolling his eyes. "But that… mark - "

But his words were cut off as Sabriel and Lirael both flinched and looked to one side, as though on some signal that Ed could neither see nor hear. He looked at Al, who shrugged.

The two sisters, however, seemed to have forgotten them, talking in hurried voices.

"What is it?" asked Lirael.

"I don't know." Sabriel was frowning into the trees. "It _feels_ like Charter magic, but…" her eyes went wide with sudden alarm. "Everyone get down!"

She had barely pulled them to the ground when a gout of brilliant golden flame exploded out of the trees, roaring over the tops of their heads. Ed felt the last of it catch the ends of his hair, singeing them on one side, before someone - and when he looked he realised it was Al - grabbed hold of his hand, pulling him forward. He opened his eyes, seeing Lirael before them, her hands open in a gesture that looked as though she were poised, waiting for a fight, though she had sheathed her sword now, leaving both hands free.

"Get to the paperwings" shouted Sabriel over her shoulder, drawing her sword in one hand, the other twitching over the bandoleer across her chest, before settling on one of the pouches, drawing out a silver bell, which she held carefully still and silent. Ed quickly produced his arm-blade once more, dimly registering Lirael blink in surprise beside him. Her hands were full of golden fire now, like that that had come from between the trees, which, strangely, seemed to be completely untouched by it. The path of the fire must have been very precise; Ed wondered if it was a form of flame alchemy, though the colour of the flames was wrong, more golden than any flame he had seen Mustang make, and seeming to shimmer in air filled with more of those strange marks, without any smoke. He also knew that flame alchemy required a source of ignition, a spark, and Lirael had - to all appearances -simply drawn the flames from the air.

 _If it really_ was _alchemy though_ … At the same moment he realised that she was not using the flame alchemy transmutation circle. _Or any circle, for that matter_ …

He knew, too well, what not needing a circle meant.

He narrowed his eyes, scrutinising Lirael's golden hand suspiciously.

"Alphonse - " Ed leaned over, speaking in a hurried whisper, when several things happened at once. Another blast of golden light came from amidst the trees, and Sabriel rang her bell, casting a bright, clear tone across the clearing. It was like the sound that he had heard before in many ways, but in others completely different. Where that sound had been the strong sound of command, an iron will, this one was open, singing, a clarion call.

"I am Abhorsen. Speak, for my fight is only against the Dead and those that would bring them back to this world" said Sabriel, command in her voice once more. "Who are you, attacking with us Charter magic?"

There was a strange hissing sound, a choking half cry. "I… am…" there was a frustrated growl, and whoever spoke seemed to be fighting agains the compulsion. "N-no!"

At that, the sound seemed to snap in the air, shattering into jangling cries that made Ed want to shout, to sing until his voice broke in his throat and burned away to nothing. Immediately Sabriel whistled, disrupting the note, dropping her sword to still the bell in her hand.

There was another blast of flame, catching Alphonse in its full force.

"Al!" shouted Ed, running forward immediately.

"No! Stay back, brother, I'm okay. The flames don't… hurt me." Al picked himself up off the singed ground.

"You two. Stay behind me." Sabriel raised her hands, a huge semi-transparent bubble billowing forward, keeping back the flames. Some sort of shield, Ed thought. Even with it there, he could feel the heat rolling over him, for he was at its edge… even as he thought this, Al was dragging him and Lirael towards the centre, shielding the two of them with his metal body as he did so. Ed and Lirael's heads knocked painfully against each other as the three of them fell.

"Brother…" Al held out his arm, and Ed clung to it as white stars exploded before his eyes, before immediately drawing his hand back with a yell, the skin of his left palm seared by the hot metal. "Sorry!" Al's voice was raised with pain, as though it was he who was hurt. "Brother, I didn't mean…"

"It's nothing" said Ed, through the pain of his already-blistering skin was making him grimace. "Lirael…" they both looked up at the girl, who had recovered more quickly and was going to her sister's side now, her hand on Sabriel's shoulder, as though to pour strength into her. Sabriel's face was sheened with sweat, her teeth gritted; she clearly couldn't hold the shield much longer, and knew it.

But even as she did so, Sabriel shook her head, motioning Lirael away.

"Lirael" she barked back over her shoulder. "Take… take these two and get to the paperwings. I'll follow."

"I can help!"

"No. Your training isn't advanced enough. I need to find out what's going on, and those two…" she nodded behind her at Ed and Al, "…are important, somehow. I need you to save them, get them back to the House…"

"But I don't want to leave you to - "

"Do it! I don't know what this is, but I need you at my back, understand?"

For a moment there was silence, and the two sisters held each others' gaze. Then Lirael nodded grimly, motioning for Ed and Al to follow. "Come on."

"We can help too!" said Ed. Lirael tried to grasp his arm, to drag him away, but he slipped past her, feeling sudden fear for Sabriel. She should not be standing there alone, silhouetted against the golden fire that came from within the trees… "Al!" he turned to his brother, who seemed to have already guessed what he was planning, running to the edge of the woods a little way away, with Lirael chasing behind them.

Al was already dropping to his knees in the sparse grass under the eaves of the forest, drawing a transmutation circle with a fallen branch.

Ed nodded approvingly. "Just what I was going to do." Biting his lip to push aside the pain in his burned palm, he clapped his hands together before him, feeling the alchemical power building, channelling through him. Then he slammed his palms to the ground, beside Al. Immediately, the ground rippled and a great wall rose from the ground along the edge of the forest in both directions, separating the four of them from the strange attacker within, rising almost as high as the treetops.

Lirael reached them just as Ed and Al were standing up, her eyes wide with surprise as she touched the wall, placing a hand on it almost gingerly. "How did you - "

"Come on!" Sabriel's voice interrupted their thoughts. "Thank you for buying us some time. Whatever that thing is, it's… stronger than I thought." She paused and took a deep breath. "We're going back to the House."

"We can stay and fight!" protested Lirael. "Find out what it is, what it wants."

"No" said Sabriel decisively. "These two need to be taken to safety - "

"Hey, we can fight too!" snarled Ed, gritting his teeth against the pain in his burned palm.

"No. You're not Charter mages, and you're going back. I won't have any more argument."

Lirael nodded, glaring at the brothers to still any remaining protests. "You heard her. And don't think this means you won't get a questioning later."

"Don't think you won't get one either" he shot back.

The paperwings, to Ed's slight alarm, turned out to be exactly what they sounded like. He knew about Amestrian aircraft; a very recent invention, first tested in the Ishvalan War. He had even seen some flying himself, looping the loop over East City, or standing still and empty upon the parade ground. But those were nothing like the craft that stood before him now. The paperwings were made of many sheets of pale blue paper, held together by some sort of laminate, with brightly painted eyes at their front sections. Those eyes looked almost alive, he thought irrationally; the idea did little to reassure him of their safety.

Al was looking at the paperwings with more obvious trepidation than Ed had thought it was possible to show on his solid-metal features. "Are we… going to fly in _that_ , Miss?"

Sabriel nodded, smiling a little, as she took off her sword belt and bandoleer and placed it inside the fuselage of one of the paperwings. "My reaction was the same on seeing them for the first time, I promise. But I am an experienced pilot now, and Lirael has made great progress since I began to teach her. She is more than competent in the air, and the journey is a relatively short one."

"Which paperwing would you like to go in?" asked Lirael.

Ed folded his arms. "Al, you go with Sabriel. Lirael, I'll go with you."

She nodded, pulling up a pair of flying googles that hung about her neck and taking a second pair from a compartment in the fuselage for him. "Then let's get in the air."

After clinging discretely to the edge of his seat during the take-off, Ed had found he quite liked flying, despite the few hair-raising moments when Lirael's craft had lurched in a sudden gust of wind. After a while though, he began to relax, the wind - though it was icy cold - numbing the burning pain in his left palm somewhat. They were following the course of a wide river downstream, and the wind whipped at his hair and clothes as he gazed avidly at his surroundings.

The whistles that Lirael and Sabriel used to raise and lower the wind were fascinating to him too. "It's really not that hard" laughed Lirael, over the noise of the wind around them, as she turned back to see his rapt expression behind her. "If you were a Charter Mage, I could teach you the marks for it in an afternoon. It does take practice to actually use them though."

Ed grimaced, rearranging his face to something more unconcerned. "Maybe" he said, before his face twisted in alarm. "What's _that?_ "

"Oh, that's just the spray off the waterfall. We're nearly home" said Lirael, banking alarmingly and following Sabriel's paperwing a little way ahead in her downwards spiral.

"Home? Why… why is home in a _river_?"

"Not the river" said Lirael, pointing. "The island."

Ed's mouth dropped open a little, his breath taken by the wind, now turbulent as they dropped in altitude. An island rose amid the wall of spray, a mere spit of land clinging to the very edge of the cliff over which the mighty torrent of the river flung itself, or so it seemed to him. On it was perched a walled house, a tower piercing the spray. The whole thing looked terribly small, as though it were merely a toy house, like the ones he had built in the stream with Alphonse and Winry when they were children. "You're going to land _there_?"

Lirael nodded. "Hold on!"

Ed took her at her word and held on hard, as Lirael whistled a cross wind and turned into it, bearing them down in a slightly lurching trajectory towards the house. As they neared it, he could make out an area of flat ground, just beside the wall, and he watched Sabriel and Al's craft nearing it with some relief.

Ed was so lost in thoughts of what would happen to Alphonse if he himself died in a paperwing crash, that he didn't notice they were about to land until they hit the landing stage with a bone-rattling bump.

Sabriel was already standing beside their paperwing, helping Lirael with her straps, by the time he recovered. "Well, there's a bit of room for improvement in your landings" she was saying, with a slight grin.

"Hey! Touchstone told me you once crashed your paperwing into a sinkhole!"

"That was the first time I flew, and a different situation entirely. Besides, my husband should be _highly_ grateful for that crash-landing, otherwise his spirit would still be trapped in Death, his body stuck as inert wood to the prow of a ship."

Ed listened to this exchange with dazed confusion, but just when he was about to ask a question, Al came up behind him. "Brother, you're hurt!"

It was then that he remembered his burned palm, the pain stabbing through him once more now that the fear and cold wind had subsided. The skin was angry red, blistered from the contact with the searing hot metal of Al's armour. "Yeah, a bit" he said, unwillingly. "But Al, it's not your fault…"

Sabriel had noticed too. "Once we're inside, I'll see to it" she said. Before he could ask how, they were trooping away from the landing stage, strange, silent hooded people filing along the path and swarming around them. Ed supposed they were servants of some sort, but he couldn't see their faces for their cowls, and that made him nervous.

The door of the house looked welcoming enough though; painted sky blue, with a brass knocker and a catflap.

"You have a cat?" said Al, sounding predictably delighted.

"Not anymore" said Lirael. "We… well, it's difficult to explain."

"We _had_ a Free Magic being of great age and power, bound into the form of a cat" said Sabriel, matter-of-factly. "But Mogget is… no longer with us."

"You mean he died?" Al sounded sad. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"No, he really is no longer with us. He goes where he will now, and is no longer chained to one form. He has won his freedom." Sabriel hesitated for another moment. "We also have another cat within our walls, but he sleeps and will not wake until this world ends, and that is for the best."

"…Oh."

"Should have stopped at difficult to explain" muttered Ed, none the wiser, as Lirael led them across the threshold.

The door led into a large entrance hall, with a soft carpet and a wide, sweeping staircase. "Oh yes, I almost forgot" said Sabriel over her shoulder, as she led them up the stairs, unbuckling her sword belt as she went. "Welcome to Abhorsen's House, Edward and Alphonse Elric."


	2. Chapter 2

“Please, try to hold still for a moment. This won’t hurt.”

Ed tried his best not to flinch as Sabriel let the golden symbols that were welling up in her hands seep into the burnt skin of his palm.

To his very great surprise, she was right; it didn’t hurt. Instead, the strange golden shapes conferred a kind of gentle, soothing warmth that reminded him unexpectedly of nothing so much of the touch of his mother’s hand, or a kiss on the brow when he was just about to fall into sleep as a child, to slip safe and secure into pleasant dreams. To his astonishment, he felt the skin of his palm was beginning to lose its raw redness, the pain ebbing away as the flesh knitted together somewhat.

After a few more minutes, Sabriel stopped, drawing back. Lirael passed her a roll of clean linen bandages, and she wrapped his hand, tying the last strip off neatly. “There you are” she said. “That should do for now.”

Ed stared at it in wonder. “I, ah… wow, thanks!”

“What did you do?” asked Al, leaning over and peering closely at Ed’s bandaged hand. Ed tried flexing his fingers within the bandage, experimentally. It was not as it had been before he had been burned, but the pain had receded, replaced by the itching of an older, mostly healed burn. He thought he might not even need the bandages.

“I just used some basic healing marks on the hand” said Sabriel. “That spell is perfectly suited to shallow cuts and burns, actually.”

Lirael grimaced, as though remembering something unpleasant, but said nothing. Instead she got up, starting to pace the well-appointed round parlour in which they sat.

“Now” said Sabriel, steepling her fingers, “I think we all owe each other some sort of explanation, don’t you?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Alchemy.” The word sounded odd in Sabriel’s voice, as though it were unfamiliar to her and she were testing its sound. “You keep mentioning it. Tell us first of that.”

Ed frowned, drawing his hand back guardedly. “Why should we tell you anything? Why should we trust you at all?”

“Brother - ”

“A reasonable question” said Sabriel, raising a hand to quiet Al, and Lirael’s immediate protest. “But I do think the fact that I just healed you - and I have shown you something of what I can do - rather means that my sister and I do not plan to hurt you. And that you owe us some sort of explanation.” She smiled. “Think of it as an exchange, if you like.”

Ed sighed, gritting his teeth. “…Fine.” he mumbled. “But if you want to know how we got here, your guess is as good as ours.”

“That’s alright. We can come to that in good time.”

He sighed. “…Then what _do_ you want to know?”

Sabriel’s smile was businesslike, hiding anticipation and curiosity beneath. “How you came here, yes, as far as you can. But of alchemy… all that you can teach.”

And so, they began to speak. The time stretched out, as Ed and Al sketched transmutation circles in pencil upon paper, Sabriel and Lirael keeping mostly quiet, asking a question occasionally. Ed tried to speak only of petty things, tricks of reshaping materials, the making of things. The most basic of alchemy, that they had learned as small children, pored over their father’s books. The kind that had made their mother smile. They spoke of Amestris when Sabriel asked, of what their country was like and of Ed’s position as a State Alchemist. And if either Sabriel or Lirael wondered about why someone so young should seek such a position, they did not ask. He told them what little he could of how they had found themselves here - _the house in the woods, the strange circle on the floor, the glowing vortex of golden light that was the last thing they had seen before finding themselves in that strange, cold river_ \- and they did not ask about that either, though Ed felt the question hanging in the air like a cloud.  

And he said nothing, of course, of human transmutation, and to his great relief Alphonse did not seem disposed to drive the conversation in that direction either.

When they were finished, they all sat back in silence for a while, Sabriel and Lirael looking down at the notes that had been scribbled on the paper between over the course of the intervening hours. And it _had_ been hours, Ed suddenly realised. The silence was broken as his stomach growled hungrily, and he was suddenly aware that he had not eaten in… well, he could barely remember how long. Suddenly, he was aware, too, of how sleepy he was, his injuries and the flight and everything that had happened making him feel as though he had been awake much longer than he had.

“Oh!” said Alphonse quickly, as Lirael pored over the notes she too had been making. “Brother needs to eat, and sleep. Can you find something for him?” He hesitated, doubtful. “We can… pay, Ed is a State Alchemist, we have money if you - ”

“The sendings will see to all your needs” interrupted Sabriel, coming quickly back to the present and smiling benevolently. “If you would rather pay for food and lodging here, then let the payment be the lesson you have just given us in your alchemy.”

Ed bit back a retort, suppressing the sudden guilt he felt for all that he had held back. “Thank you.”

“You are the one that we should thank” said Sabriel. “You have taught us much today.”

 _More than you know_ , he thought her eyes said, and again, Ed suppressed a shiver. No, he assured himself, a mere moment later; there was no reason to think that either Sabriel or Lirael knew they were hiding anything.

So he merely nodded politely. “Thanks.”

 

Lirael had left soon after, taking with her the papers Ed and Al had written upon on the desk in the study. He had narrowed his eyes at that, suspicion lighting in him once more, but it had not lasted for long; the prospect of food - combined with the strange manner of its arrival at the long dining table - had pushed the thought quickly from his mind.

The sendings - as Sabriel called them - would take some getting used to he thought, as he eyed the glowing, ghostly hand of the one that took his plate away from the long, polished wood table in the dining hall. The first moment he had seen one, catching a glimpse of the faceless figure peering from beneath its hood and realising it was not a person as he had thought, he admitted, grudgingly, that he had been startled.

Al, however, seemed to be quite unperturbed by the sendings and their lack of faces; their lack, in fact, of any solidity. That left Ed feeling a little chastened, and so instead of arguing as he might have, he let hunger win and turned his face away to concentrate on his meal. By the end of the three courses - and, Ed had to admit, the stuffed mushrooms followed by orange and pepper roasted quail with purple potatoes and blossom-honey soaked carrots, and the peach and rosewater custard tart to finish were all delicious, surely the best cooking he had ever tasted except for the memory of his mother’s - he was feeling almost accustomed to their silent presence and ghostly touch. The warm buzz of what he could only assume were densely-woven Charter marks making up their flesh was almost pleasant, after a fashion, when they accidentally brushed his elbow while picking up his plate.

As Ed ate, Al spent the time gazing up at the stained glass windows in wonder, watching the patterns of the glass change, figures building something - or so Ed thought - picked out in jewel-bright, shifting light. It was beautiful, impossible, and under any other circumstances, Ed would have been at his brother’s side, looking up curiously at the windows, trying to figure out how they worked. Now, though, he was simply too tired, his mind apparently staving off exhaustion only long enough for him to eat his meal, leaving him warm and full and sleepy.

Al seemed to like it here, anyway, which was good, Ed thought grimly. For if they were never able to return home… _no_. He shut out that particular thought, as determinedly as he had always shut out the insidious fear that they would never get their original bodies back, locking it in the same forbidden place in his mind. They had gotten themselves here, and they could get themselves back. There had to be a way, it was just a matter of finding it.

When he finally rose to his feet, Al was there to meet him, having to half prop him up as Ed struggled to keep his eyes open. He remembered little of being shown to his room by several more sendings, a large, well-appointed guest bedroom up the broad, sweeping staircase. He merely kicked off his boots, dropped his coat on the floor beside the bed, crawled beneath the covers and fallen into a deep, deep sleep.

* * *

Alphonse sat in the chair by the window, the moonlight falling on the pages of the book in his hands. The little parlour adjoined to the bedroom Ed had been given, connected by a door that stood half-open. Through the narrow slice of a view it afforded, Al could just see Ed’s feet - one of automail, one of flesh and blood - as his brother slept, where Ed had kicked off the powder-blue blankets and sheets as he turned over, lost in some dream.

Sometimes, if Ed’s blankets began to slip in the course of some nightmare, Al would tuck him back beneath them, or even wake him, but today he simply let him sleep. He did not think that whatever Ed was dreaming was something dark tonight; it was not the sort of place for it here. Al supposed it was warm enough too, though he could not actually feel the heat of the remains of the fire glowing comfortingly orange in the grate. But here was a place of peace, of rest, he was sure. And so he left Ed to sleep on; after all, he thought, his brother surely needed it.

Al was used to taking the other rooms, the ones that weren’t meant for sleeping in; sometimes, these days, he wondered what it would be like to sleep again. The thought - and the implication that it carried, that his memories of his body were ebbing away like sand - disturbed him more than he could say, and he was always more at ease when dawn came and he could put such things from his mind, for a little while at least.

Luckily though, this particular room seemed to hold the overspill of the Abhorsens’ book collection, a small portion of the library housed here. Books were always Al’s escape, these last years, when the hours stretched endless and silent before him every night, his metal body resistant to the blissful, quiet darkness of sleep. When his brother slept, Al would read, as often as they were in a place with a fascinating collection of books on hand. Which was often enough, given Ed’s travels as a State Alchemist. It was useful, he thought. It helped, it allowed them to be more efficient in their research, he was helping them in the fight to get their bodies back.

Still, Al would have given much for a mere hour’s sleep.

That was impossible, though. So instead, he picked out a book at random, a heavy tome bound in pale blue linen, embossed with a strange and beautiful geometric pattern in silver. But no sooner had he flicked to the title page when a quiet sound behind him made him start, closing the book with a snap. He turned and saw Lirael standing in the doorway, a glowing ember of golden light cupped in her hand. Her eyes went wide with alarm for just a moment, her face lit starkly from below, her whole posture tense, on guard. The light in her hands flared up to light the semi-darkness, driving back the shadows clotting in the corners of the moonlit room. Yet after a moment the light faded back to its usual brightness and Lirael relaxed, recognising Al.

“Oh! Alphonse. I am sorry, I had forgotten that you didn't… can’t…” she trailed off, twisting her hands before her, clearly uncomfortable.

“It’s okay, people do.” He looked up, wishing he could smile to reassure her that he really was alright. “Sorry, did you want to get to the books?”

“Yes, actually.” Lirael blushed slightly. “There was a book that I thought was in the study, and when I couldn’t find it I thought it might have been reshelved here by mistake. Only I had forgotten that the sendings put you and your brother in these rooms. It’s alright, I can look in the morning.”

“No, no, please check the shelves if you like.” He paused for a moment as she crossed the room on quiet feet. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No, I can’t.” She hesitated once more, standing before the bookshelf, holding up her Charter light to the spines of the books. She turned away after just a moment, back to Alphonse, as though her curiosity had gotten the better of her. She hesitated for a moment longer. “Do you…” said in a small voice, “do you really never need to sleep?”

He nodded, slowly. “This body doesn’t need rest.”

She frowned, abandoning the books and gesturing at the other chair. “May I…?” When he nodded, she drew it up to sit at his side, still holding the golden Charter light in her cupped hands, its brightness mingling with the softer glow of the marks on her golden hand. “That must be… lonely” she said, almost too softly for Al to hear.

He considered this. “Well, sometimes it is.”

“And you read to pass the hours until morning?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I go for a walk. Sometimes I watch over brother, as he sleeps.”

To this she said nothing, but only sat at his side in thoughtful silence; words would have been superfluous. Alphonse found himself rather warming to her. Sudden curiosity emboldened him. “Miss Lirael? May I ask something?”

She smiled wanly. “Of course. And just _Lirael_ is fine, you know.”

“Sorry… Lirael. Um. If you don’t mind… how… how did you lose your hand?”

She closed her eyes briefly, not speaking for a moment long enough to make him fear he’d made a terrible mistake. When she spoke, though, her voice was uninflected, neutral, neither joyful nor sorrowful. “I was… I was trying to save everyone. I was binding a great and terrible enemy, one that would have destroyed us all, and I thought that I would have to sacrifice myself to do it. I would have willingly given my life…” she faltered. “My… my best friend. She was the one who did…” Lirael touched the place where the flesh of her arm met the Charter-spelled gold, lightly “…this.” She sighed. “She saved me. I didn’t expect to live, but she saved me.”

“Oh… where is she now?”

“Gone” said Lirael, casting her eyes down. “There was, as always, a price to be paid.”

Alphonse nodded. He knew something of that, at least. “I’m sorry.”

She looked back up at him, smiling weakly. “Don’t be. I lived on. I found my family, and my place in this world. I have a nephew, Sam, who made me this…” she flexed her golden fingers with a fluid ripple of magic even as the light played across the intricately worked gold, and Alphonse thought of how much Winry would like to get a look at it. The thought of Winry, of Resembool, of home, sent a pang through him. He turned his attention quickly back to Lirael, who had begun to speak again. “Yes” she said. “Yes, I’ve come out of this well enough. Or I think I will have, one day. Does that… make sense?”

Al nodded. “Yeah, it does to me.” And, he realised, though he barely knew Lirael at all, it was true. It gave him hope, too. He hesitated for a moment more. “There’s something that brother always says… you should stand up and keep on walking. That you have to make your own way and carry on, no matter what. And I believe that.”

“Keep walking?” said Lirael, curiously, her face twisting a little. Al found he could not tell if it was a grimace of pain, or a ghost of a wistful smile on her face, or both; perhaps it was simply curiosity. At last she did smile, a tiny, watery laugh escaping her. “Ah, but does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”

Al thought about that for a while, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

Lirael smiled wanly. “I’m still working it out myself, really. Sometimes I think we all are.”

They sat in companionable silence for a little while longer, as Ed slept in the adjoining room and outside the window the moon crept across the sky towards morning.

* * *

_A house, set deep in the forest. A tall set of double doors, swinging open before him, as the sky went from blue to ultramarine to black, the stars sparkling into life as thin wisps of cloud scudded across the moon. The high windows letting in slanting squares of moonlight, falling upon the wooden floor as their feet sounded too loud in the silence._

_A hallway, leading to a great, empty hall, galleries looking down on all four sides, wreathed in shadow. There was no one there, or at least no one visible._

_A hand on his arm, a momentary start, but it was his brother’s voice at his side, crying out in warning. Too late though, as the painted circle on the floor began to glow with bright golden light under his touch. The paint was golden-coloured too, he realised now in that brilliance, although the moonlight had before bled all but a scant remainder of its colour from it._

_The brilliant golden light flaring brighter, beginning to fill the room. Racing across the painted lines like fire, but without smoke. Strange symbols, never seen in any book on alchemy, blooming bright in the air._

_A great whirling, sucking sound, the golden light becoming a blinding maelstrom, then surrounding them, pulling them away from that place like water spiralling down a sink._

_The grey light of the cold river, the dreadful current that tugged at the legs, threatening to drag him down, to a place from which he knew - without knowing how - that there could be no returning. And then a more familiar sight. A hand reaching back to him, skeletal and clawing, two glowing red eyes in the darkness as blood flowed onto the floor and a child screamed in the nothingness…_

Ed started awake, breathing hard. His legs were tangled in the blankets, his hair falling across his face, so for a moment he was half-blind and trapped, ensnared, and pure panic flooded his mind as the tail ends of the dream dissipated into the unfamiliar room.

“Brother?” came the familiar voice, from beyond the door that stood half-open.

“Al?” the panic and disorientation were ebbing away, as waking awareness returned and Ed remembered where he was.

Ed thought he heard the quiet tap of receding, slippered steps on the other side of the door, but perhaps he had imagined it, for it was only his brother who came to stand in the doorway. “Were you dreaming again?”

Ed sighed, pushing back his hair, holding his hands before his eyes for just a moment. “…Yeah.”

Al didn’t press him for details anymore, and that was usually just what he wanted, what he needed. Yet now he felt the need to speak. “It was about… how we came here.” _Also the usual familiar horrors that haunted him at night, but that went without saying_.

Al nodded. “I guessed it might be.”

Ed looked up at him. “Do you think we can get back?”

“I don’t know” said Al in a small voice. “I hope so.” He hesitated for a moment. “Sabriel will find a way. Or Lirael will. They… well, they’re good people. I know they are. They want to help us.”

 _That might not be enough_ , Ed nearly said. But he didn’t. “Well, it seems like we’re going to have to take a break from trying to get our bodies back. First we need to get home. So, it looks like another search, if you can wait a bit longer, Al.”

Al nodded. “And maybe… maybe we can find something that will help here?”

“Yeah.” Ed smiled. “Maybe we can.”

Feeling a little encouraged by the mere speaking of the words, he got out of bed, noticing the room for the first time; he had barely been awake enough to notice when he had fallen into bed the night before, but the room was richly furnished, the carpet thick and soft under his feet. There was a corner that was set with tiles, with a tap and a metal bathtub. _A bath would be nice right now_ , Ed thought. He tugged restlessly at the end of his braid, which had become hopelessly dishevelled as he slept, pulling out the tie and dragging his fingers through his hair as he thought about getting dressed. He vaguely remembered having dropped his coat and boots on the floor the night before just before falling asleep, but they were nowhere to be seen, though he did spot his pocket watch on the beside table, its chain folded in a neat bundle. He picked it up, shoving it quickly back in his pocket. He realised someone had also taken off his jacket for him while he slept. He supposed it had been Al; it would certainly not have been the first time. He cast about for them, frowning, as he thought back to the previous night. Suddenly he realised that it was not only his coat, jacket and boots that were gone; he was, in fact, not wearing any of his own clothes at all, but instead a set of loose white cotton pyjamas. “Hey, Al?” he said, frowning. “What happened to the rest of my clothes?”

“Those guys with the hoods took them” said Al. “The sendings.”

Ed blinked. “What? They undressed me?”

“Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t stop them. I think they were going to wash your clothes.” Ed must have looked nonplussed, as Al continued. “You know, the sendings, those hooded… people. The ones who weren’t exactly…” Al seemed to cast around for the right word “…solid.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ed frowned. He did remember the sendings, as Sabriel had called them, though now in the light of day her explanation had been far from satisfactory. The memory of the strange beings who were - to all appearances - not entirely corporeal was one that had bothered him, and that he had put firmly away with all the other unbelievably things he had witnessed that previous day, to be thought on later. He frowned, clenching his fists. “Well, they’re not having my coat. I’m gonna go and get - aaah! Hey!”

At that moment, the door had burst open, and in bustled three sendings, each with their arms full. One held a stack of towels and a white cotton laundry bag, the other a set of empty buckets. The third held some rags and a tin of something Ed did not have time to read the label of, before they were tugging his borrowed shirt over his head, prodding and shoving at him in the general direction of the tiled bathing area.

“What are you… stop it!” he shouted indignantly, as one cranked the tap, and steaming water gushed out into a rather small bathtub, into which they seemed to be trying to push him. One of them was undoing the bandage on his hand; his palm had healed even further since yesterday, the burn below the bandage barely more than a patch of slightly reddened, scarred-over skin now. He had just had time to notice that, and was frowning at it once more, before he was brought back to the present by another sending pushing him - none too gently - towards the bath tub.

“Okay, okay, let me undress first…” he had the distinct impression that whatever the sendings were, they were single-minded enough in their determination to see him clean that they wouldn’t hesitate to undress him themselves - _again_ \- an eventuality which he would much rather preempt this time, since he was awake. He _did_ want a bath, he thought grumpily, but these pushy…. things, whatever they were, were almost enough to ruin the idea for him.

Ed shed his clothes and dropped them in a pile at the edge of the carpet, before climbing into the bath. “Alright, alright, happy now?” He winced a little at the water that was soaking his automail - _he hadn’t got his maintenance kit with him here, and Winry would kill him if he started to rust. That was, if he ever saw Winry again_ … he glared at the sendings instead of letting that thought stay in the forefront of his mind for too long. “Okay, can you please actually be helpful and pass me my - _augh_!”

Ed coughed and spluttered, swearing enough to make Al burst out laughing, as a sending tipped a bucket of water over his head, soaking his hair, and another began to attack him with a bar of soap. Ed was quick though, quick enough to snatch away the soap and hold it behind him, out of the sending’s reach, planning to do it himself. But the magical being merely reached over with its strangely extendable arm and snatched the soap back, holding it high enough in the air that he had to stand on the tips of his toes - almost leading him to overbalance - though even that was futile; this particular sending was at least six feet tall, and seemed to be able to change its height as the need suited it. Ed ground his teeth.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing” he snapped at Al, giving up and letting the sending soap his hair as it would. “You traitor! I thought you were on my side?”

“Sorry” giggled Al. “It’s just so - _ack_! Brother, help! Make them stop!”

It was Ed’s turn to burst out laughing now, as a sending grabbed Al’s arms and pinned them deftly behind his back, attacking him with a cloth and metal polish.

“Careful with his blood seal” said Ed, his voice going sharp with sudden worry. “Don’t go near it with water, or polish, or anything.”

The sending, to his relief, seemed to understand well enough, for it nodded solemnly to him before going back to polishing Al’s head with enthusiastic zeal. Ed grinned. “Other than that, do what you like.”

“Brother! How could you?”

“Ha! How the tables have turned…”

The sendings, as it turned out, knew what they were doing, and Ed had to admit he was grateful for the soap and hot water; he felt better now that he was clean. He was even pleasantly surprised to note that they seemed to have a good knowledge of how to clean and oil automail - though he couldn’t imagine where they would learn such a thing - yet still they let him do it himself, following the cleaning and polishing routine that Winry had gone through with him so many times.

One was running a brush through his damp hair now, as another sending bustled in through the door, carrying a stack of newly-laundered, dry clothes in its arms; they were his own, Ed saw, looking cleaner and less rumpled than they had - well, probably ever. His coat was strangely warm, and smelled faintly of something floral that he couldn’t identify. His boots had been polished too, he saw, in mild disbelief.

Once Ed had managed to dress himself whilst staying mostly free of the sendings’ interference, the sun had risen fully outside the window. “I don’t know what you’re so damn satisfied about” he grumbled at the sending who was watching him expectantly as he finished braiding his hair, elbowing away the hand of another sending that tried to help him. He had the slightly disturbing impression that if the sending had had a face - which it certainly did not - its smile would be some combination of mocking and indulgent. “Now” he said, drawing himself up and pulling on his coat, in front of the tall mirror. He clipped his pocket-watch back onto his belt loop. “When’s breakfast?”

 

Al met him in the adjoining room, where he had been happily absorbed in a book for some time after his polishing, or so it seemed. Ed noticed too that his brother’s armour looked shinier than he had seen it since they had last left Winry behind.

The table in the great hall was already laid for breakfast for four when Ed and Al came down the broad, sweeping staircase, but for all the activity - yet more sendings hurrying back and forth from the kitchens carrying dishes and teapots and bowls of fruit - the table had only one occupant. Sabriel sat alone, in the grand chair at the table’s head, looking almost forbidding as she raised her eyes to meet them, Ed thought for a moment. But then she smiled, and extended a hand graciously.

“Please, sit, and help yourself to breakfast.” She gestured to the two seats on her left, before smiling apologetically. “Alphonse, I’m sorry, but the sendings don’t seem to have grasped the fact that you don’t eat, and so they may seem a little… impolite.”

“A _little_ impolite?” griped Ed. “Those things are a menace! You should have seen the one with the hot water this morning! Hey, why are you laughing? Stop it!”

Sabriel was indeed laughing quietly, looking away as though remembering something from long ago. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought the exact same, once, but over the years I’ve gotten used to their ways. They mean well, I promise. They do get rather overenthusiastic when we have guests, since the family is small enough, these last decades.”

“Decades?” asked Ed, sitting down in the chair beside her, as Al took the other. “How old are the sendings, then?”

“Oh, anywhere from several years to centuries, or older” said Sabriel. “Each of my ancestors made a few new ones, and they tend to build up.” She grimaced as the ghostly-pale hand of a sending pushed past her elbow, pouring Ed a cup of tea without consulting him. “They also tend to get a little more… well, _sentient_ with age, shall we say. Just how the marks settle and rearrange themselves, I suppose, but the older ones are somewhat more eccentric, as a rule.”

“So… they’re conscious?” asked Ed, raising an eyebrow. “They’re people?”

“Ah, there you touch near to a question that wise mages and scholars of Charter magic have debated for many thousands of years” said Sabriel, smiling once more as she took a piece of toast from the stack in the middle of the table and buttered it delicately. “I’m afraid no one can quite agree on that.”

“They certainly _act_ human” said Al, wincing as a sending tried to offer him a platter of bacon, eggs and sausages, then another, more insistently, of toast and pastries when the first was politely declined, the porcelain loudly clanking against his arm.

Ed took the platter instead, giving the insistent sending a glare. “In the worst possible way, apparently” he muttered, and he thought he heard Sabriel laugh quietly to herself. But even as he piled his plate with food, his mind was working, trying to remember something he had read in an alchemy textbook many years ago. _The creation of humans_ … but he had read that it was impossible, a legend, that a real live homunculus had never been documented. He frowned, mentally filing away that idea for more thought later. Now, the smell of food was distracting, and besides, he was still wary of Sabriel. It was probably best to change the subject, at least until he knew he could trust her. He took a forkful of eggs and ate. “Where’s Lirael?” he asked, looking around.

“Still sleeping?” suggested Al.

Sabriel shook her head. “No. She rose before the sun, to continue her studies.”

“Studies?”

“I’m training her, as my successor.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Your successor?”

“My successor as Abhorsen, yes.” Sabriel smiled sadly. “She will be a good Abhorsen, I am confident. She is diligent, highly intelligent, and has an innate talent for Charter magic, though she’s largely self-taught. She is also brave and kind. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to train my own successor, since not all Abhorsens have had that opportunity, through the years… but also I’m glad to have had the chance to have known my sister.”

“What?” asked Ed, confused. He refrained, rather tactfully he thought, from commenting on his own impression of Lirael, and her obvious mistrust of him. He still only barely understood what an Abhorsen even _was_ , despite the sisters’ explanation the night before. “Why would you not know your sister?” he asked instead.

“Well, we’re half-sisters” said Sabriel. “I grew up knowing our father, but she did not. He was killed, only a few months before she was born, and I never knew of her existence until a few months ago.”

“I’m sorry” said Al. “That you both lost your father.”

Sabriel smiled. “Don’t be. I’ve come to terms with it. He gave me so much, risked everything to protect me, and I loved him. But there was also so much he didn’t tell me. I accept that now, though at the time I suppose I didn’t understand why he left me so alone, telling me barely anything of what he knew of the fate of the world, and of my part in it.” She saw Ed glance at Al, an eyebrow going up as she caught the involuntary twist of pain in his face. “Ah, I take it you are in a similar… situation? I am sorry if I brought back unpleasant memories.”

 _This one’s too clever for comfort_ , thought Ed, swallowing his bite of toast and gritting his teeth in resentful silence. _Just like her sister. We should be careful_.

“Our father left” Al was already explaining softly, even as this thought crossed Ed’s mind. “And our mother… she died, when we were younger.”

“I’m sorry” said Sabriel. She did seem genuinely sympathetic at the very least, Ed thought. “I grew up without a mother too.” Something crossed her face then, a twist of pain, or perhaps a sudden thought, but she brought it quickly back under control.  She smiled. “But these days I have my family. My husband and my daughter and son are a blessing, and finding out I had a sister was the truest instance of serendipity I have ever known.”

“Hmm.” Ed had to make an effort to remain tactfully silent; though Sabriel obviously loved Lirael, and Al was clearly growing to trust her, he found he could not warm to her himself. She was too silent, too watchful, closed off; he couldn’t understand what went on behind her dark eyes.

However much he tried to stay silent though, Sabriel seemed to catch his reticence. “You must excuse her, sometimes” she said, with a heavy sigh. “Even now, Lirael struggles around new people, and she has black moods that can bring her near to breaking.”

Al raised his head, sounding concerned. “What happened to her?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No. I mean… I spoke to her last night, while brother was sleeping - ”

“Wait, what?”

“ - but I didn’t want to ask, in case…”

Sabriel smiled ruefully. “Ah, well, if Lirael did not feel ready to tell you, then I shall respect that. Suffice it to say that she… well, she saved us from the greatest Enemy this world has seen, that would have broken the land at Its feet. Lirael and my son Sam prevented that, and saved all of us, really, but at a cost.”

“Her hand?” asked Ed, frowning.

“That was the least of it” said Sabriel.

“What else did she lose?”

“Her first and best friend” said Sabriel, heavily. “A creature of the Charter, a sort of embodiment of one of the nine Bright Shiners - ”

“The what?”

“All you need to know is that Lirael tried to lay down her own life in the vanquishing of a terrible foe. She was saved from Death. But one she cared about deeply is gone, and that leaves a wound that lingers long in the heart.”

“Survivor’s guilt” said Al, nodding.

“Yes. Though she did something extraordinary - she saved us all - there was a price to be paid.”

Ed stared down at his half-finished plate, solemn suddenly. “Well, that I can understand.”

Sabriel nodded. “It has been several months now, and she is healing.” She sighed, going silent for a moment. “Still” she said briskly, raising her head and taking another sip of tea. “Lirael is one of the most courageous and steadfast people I have ever known - not to mention the most hardworking pupil I could possibly hope for. She needs time for healing to come, and it will, in the end, I believe.”

There was a short silence, as Ed tried to work out what to say to this. But he was spared, as a sending approached Sabriel, leaning forward and pushing back its hood to whisper in her ear.

“Ah” said Sabriel, setting down her teacup and clasping her hands together briskly. “It appears that Lirael has returned, and there is something I would discuss with her, so I will have to excuse myself. But please, join us presently in the study. There is much we need to speak of still, I think.”

 

“You have to listen to me, Sabriel. I know what I saw in the Mirror, it’s necromancy. I don’t know _how_ , but - ”

Lirael’s hurried voice on the other side of the door ceased immediately as Al knocked on the study door. A moment later, they heard the scrape of a chair, and Sabriel’s voice from within, quite calm.

“Come in.”

The study was warm and bright and comforting, filled with golden light from some sort of glowing spheres of light in brackets on the walls - somehow Ed did not think they were electric, and they made no smoke - as well as a cheerful fire crackling in the grate. He was just about to take a closer look at the beautifully carved dragons on the impressive, grand-looking desk, when he caught sight of Sabriel, seated in the desk chair as though deep in thought, and Lirael, who was pacing backwards and forwards across the room, in evident agitation. The air - belying the cosy look of it when they had first walked in - was thick with tension, a silence that seemed to be the prelude to a storm.

A cold trickle of foreboding crept down Ed’s spine as he met their gazes. Lirael was looking at the two of them with wide eyes, many expressions flitting across her features. She was holding a square silver case before her, turning it over and over between her fingers seemingly without conscious thought.

“What?” demanded Ed, squaring his shoulders.

Lirael seemed unable to speak for a moment, until Sabriel placed a gentle hand on her arm. “You Saw?”

Lirael was completely still for a moment, then nodded slowly. All the while, her eyes never left Ed and Al, her gaze full of horror and fascination, mixed with a deep, immeasurable sadness.

Sabriel looked at her a long time, searching her face, before looking at Ed and Al, who were both staring nonplussed at the two of them. After a while she turned back to Lirael. “Can you… will you show us?”

“I don’t know if…” she looked back at Ed and Al, a spasm of something like fear passing over her face before she sighed, her features setting grimly. “Yes. I suppose there cannot be much more harm done by it. And I… I have things I need to know, questions to be asked after.”

Before Ed could ask her what she meant by this, she raised a hand between into the air between them, golden Charter marks bursting from her fingers. She inscribed a large, shimmering square in the air, which she then tapped lightly, causing the air within to ripple and change. After a moment, where before had been only blank air, there was a patch of matte darkness, like the sky on a starless, cloudless night.

Ed watched all this in fascination, but let out a small sound as Lirael closed her eyes, placing a hand to the edge of the square with an expression of intense concentration on her face.

She was causing an image to form there, adjusting it somehow into full focus.

The image was one he recognised.

It was their own house in Resembool, the house that now lay in ash and charred timbers. But it was not burned in the picture before him; it stood on the hill with the tall spreading branches of the tree above, the rope swing softly stirred by a gentle breeze. It was very early morning, it seemed; the sky was still half dark, but shot through with colour as the rising sun touched the wisps of cloud that limned the sky.

There was someone at the door.

The light of dawn touched on a head of golden hair, as a man turned and left the house, walking down the path and carrying a single case. He kept his face forward, never looking back.

Ed gritted his teeth in old anger as the door closed behind his father. He knew that the other figure silhouetted within the door was his mother, and just behind in the shadows that still cloaked the house were two young boys, himself and Al. He even remembered that moment, though the memory was not a clear one, cloaked in the haziness of childhood.

The view changed then, time seeming to move faster and faster, as moments from their lives back then flitted before his eyes like moths; he and Al chasing each other around the kitchen as their mother cooked dinner with a smile on her face, the wind blowing in the branches of the tree outside the house, himself lying in the swaying grass with Al and Winry, looking up at the sky. Then there were the books, his father’s old room that he and Al had crept into with reverent fascination, learning alchemy from dusty tomes that seemed older and more thrilling than the world itself. Slowly and meticulously memorising transmutation circles, elements, tables, calculations, old lore… and then when they successfully transmuted something, a little figurine, a toy… then there was his mother’s smile, the pride on her face, joyful tears glimmering in her eyes.

It had all been a joy then, a whole new world to discover. Infinite power, it had seemed, power to make a world of wonderful things. And power that made their mother smile seemed the best of all.

The vision changed again.

Their mother, her face half hidden by a spill of hair, her skin horribly pale and entirely still. Beside him, Ed felt Al shift where he sat, and laid a light hand on his arm. He knew Al would not feel it, but somehow it still seemed to draw a connection between them, a current of support that ran both ways.

They watched as their younger selves stood by a grave, laying flowers there. Pinako and Winry leaving, so it was just the two of them left. Talking in quiet voices. Ed could not make out the words in the vision, nor could he remember exactly what he or Al had said that day, only the end result, the decision that they had made.

For from that moment, they had known what they must do. The vision seemed to respond to this. Scenes were jumbled up one of top of each other now; he caught a glimpse of the two of them, reading a heavy book, small hands covered in chalk as they sketched transmutation circles on the sun-drenched flagstones outside their house. Izumi standing silhouetted by the lightning as they had first seen her that day when the river flooded, and then the island, then the inside of the house in Dublith; Ed could almost smell the aroma of cooking coming from the kitchen, hear Sig talking with a customer in the shop, and the familiarity of it made his heart ache.

Then the square went black.

When the vision returned again, it was even more familiar, but this time from the nightmares, the horrors that twined about him at night in ragged tatters of fitful sleep.

It was their own basement, and two boys sat at the edge of a great circle, smiling at each other. The view focused on their faces for a moment; how their eyes had shone with excitement at the prospect of bringing back their mother. There was nervousness in Al’s gaze too though, and Ed watched helplessly as his younger self reassured his brother. He could not hear the exact words, nor could he remember them, but he knew all too well what he had thought, his confidence. _This will work. Things will go back to how they were before, because they have to. They_ have _to_.

In the vision, Ed and Al placed their hands on the edge of the circle, and the room began to fill with blue light, drawing the colour from the scene.

he knew what came next, and he almost didn’t want to watch. _Not again_. But he forced himself to stare straight ahead at the strange dark window, his mouth set in a hard line as in the vision, Al’s eyes - his real body’s eyes, the eyes of frightened child - went wide with fear as Ed reached for him, both their mouths open in a scream that they couldn’t hear. The vision - or whatever this was - had no sound, after all. Al’s human hand disintegrating, unspooling into the air, even as a younger Ed tried to grasp it. He watched as blood spilled across the tiles, his own blood, from the raw stump of his leg; he had not realised at the time quite how _much_ blood there was, not until he saw it pooling on the floor from the point of view of an outsider, an onlooker.

Then there was _that_.

Silhouetted in the dark, eyes glowing red, the inhuman thing that was supposed to be their mother - _it wasn’t, it couldn’t be… could it?_ \- gazed back at him, reaching mutely out with that skeletal hand that he still saw in his nightmares.  

His own memory grew patchy and uncertain here - he had been brought before the Gate then, he supposed, but in the strange view through which he saw it now, he could see only a child screaming on the floor in a spreading pool of blood.

Beside him, Al - the real Al, or what was left of him, Ed thought with another stab of pain - half turned his face away, making a small sound as though he were about to speak, before resolutely staring back at the vision Lirael was showing them.

Silently, their hands met and clasped between them.

Then the view blurred, focussing back on Ed, tears running down his pain-twisted face in the blue light. He was shouting something, and he clapped his hands together - his first transmutation without a circle, the one that had changed everything - and then he was scrabbling on the floor in a pool of his own blood, drawing the blood seal inside their father’s old armour, before collapsing to the floor, his strength all but spent as yet more blood gushed from the place his arm had been.

The vision, or whatever it was, seemed to end there, fading to black, even as Lirael drew back, pale and trembling. It seemed to have cost her a great effort to hold the vision before them, and now her shoulders slumped, as she let it dissipate into the air in a swirl of Charter marks.

For a moment silence rang in the room between them, as they all contemplated what they had just seen.

It was Sabriel who recovered first. “Perhaps” she said as she guided Lirael down into the chair, her voice slow and a little hollow, “if I had known before, I could have spared you having to relive that. Let me say, first of all, that I owe you an apology. I am very sorry.”

“What for?” demanded Ed, his shoulders squared, bristling. He was prepared for her to reprimand them, to demand an explanation, but not for this.

She sighed, spreading her hands before her. “I betrayed your trust. I went behind your backs, and asked Lirael to look into your past, to the thing that you were hiding from us.” She raised a hand as Ed started to get to his feet. “You must understand, the life of an Abhorsen is one of danger and perpetual vigilance. Suspicion of a trap or a false friend, anything that is not what it seems, is something that we learn to exercise at all times. An unfortunately necessity.”

This was not what Ed had been expecting, and he started, half getting up from his seat. Anger was easier than sorrow, than grief, than guilt. He would not accept pity. “You had no right to - ”

“I know” said Lirael abruptly, breaking through his protest, even as Al laid a hand on his arm. “I… I know.”

“Nevertheless” said Sabriel, picking up where her sister had left off, “I think I need you to tell me everything now. What was…” she gestured into the air before them, where the vision had been a moment ago. “What did you do?”

“You both know very well” said Ed through gritted teeth. He glared at Lirael. “You’ve done it too, haven’t you?”

She looked genuinely shocked. “What?”

“Human transmutation. Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not - ”

“How did you _really_ lose your hand, then?” he demanded. “And why don’t you have to use transmutation circles? Neither of you can fool us with your so-called _magic_.” he looked between them, voice rising accusingly. “I know what you did.” He could feel tears starting in his eyes now, tears of humiliation, of frustration, all the ones he had held back even as he had started to trust Sabriel and Lirael despite himself.

“Brother - ” began Al.

“Don’t take their side!” said Ed sharply. “They’ve been lying to us, Al. All this time, they’ve been lying to us.”

“You _dare_ accuse me… I would never fall to any… any necromancy like that!” snapped Lirael, waving the small case before them. “I am… I am an Abhorsen. That’s who I _am_ , and I would never, _ever_ …” she seemed to be breathing too hard, and Sabriel took her silently in her arms, holding Lirael close as her words tailed off into nothing.

“Shh” whispered Sabriel, soothingly. “Hush dear, I know. I know.”

Lirael raised her head, subsiding back into the chair once more and letting her hair swing back over her face, even as her sister’s gaze came back to Ed and Al.

“ _Human transmutation_ , you called it?” said Sabriel slowly, as though trying the sound of the words. She did not seem angry, only curious, and that left Ed as confused as he was frustrated, suddenly beset by doubt. _Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion? Had he told them too much?_ She paused for a moment, her dark eyes calculating, and then softened. “You were trying to bring back your mother from Death, weren’t you?”

Ed’s mouth dropped open slightly, words stopping in his throat.

“We…” began Al, “we just wanted to see her smile again. That was all we wanted!”

Sabriel’s voice was immeasurably sad. “Everyone and everything has a time to die” she said softly, under her breath. “Do you know who told me that?”

Ed stared at her, wishing that her could hold onto his anger from the moment before; he felt exhausted, worn out.

Al was shaking his head.

“It was my - our - father” said Sabriel, with a quick glance at Lirael. “Before he died.” She took a breath. “It is the creed of the Abhorsens, the lesson that we live by. I… I brought him back, if only for a little while.”

Ed caught his breath. “You…”

Sabriel nodded. “He was trapped in Death, and I returned him to this world. But he had been too long away. He was permitted a hundred hundred heartbeats, before his Life ran out. Long enough to save me, to give me the Life that he could no longer have.”

“Equivalent exchange” murmured Al.

Sabriel inclined her head. “I suppose you could call it that. And yet this world is cruel, and far from fair. It took me… well, it took me a long time to accept that.”

They were all silent for a moment more, each lost in their own thoughts.

“Lirael…” said Al, at last. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you had to see that, too.”

Lirael was shaking her head, turning the little silver case over and over in her hands. “You don’t need to apologise. I…” she took a deep breath. “I… overreacted. I was in Death, and when i saw that…”

Ed started up. “You were in Death? Just… just now?”

“Outside, this morning. You can’t go into Death within the walls of Abhorsen’s House, but I went down to the east bank to look into the past.”

“You can look into the past” said Ed weakly, shaking his head. “Of course you can.”

Lirael nodded, holding up the little case. “From Death, yes.”

“Does… ah… _why_ does it have to be from Death?”

She gave him an odd look. “It just does” she said, slowly, and then, in a quieter voice, “besides… Time and Death sleep side by side.”

“What?”

“Just something someone told me once.”

Ed blinked. “…Okay.”

There was a short silence, but the air between them was a little less tense than it had been just a moment before.

It was Sabriel who broke the silence, her voice gentle but firm as she turned her gaze on Ed and Al once more. “I think it is fair to say there’s still a lot of your story that you haven’t told us.”

Ed glared at his shoes. “Not much left to tell now.”

“There is, though. I won’t make you go through… _that_ again. But please, start again with how you came here, from your… Amestris, did you say? All the details this time please, even the ones you left out before.”

“There’s really not so much to tell” said Ed reluctantly, shrugging. “We heard of an old house in the forest, south of Dublith… that’s a place in our… our world…” he gritted his teeth at the strangeness of it all, and carried on. “It was supposed to be abandoned, but there were all sorts of weird rumours about it. People going missing nearby, twenty years ago… stuff like that.”

“Colonel Mustang sent us to investigate” put in Al, picking up the story as Ed stared into the fire. “He sent us… because he knows that we’re looking for any clues we can find about the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Alphonse!” hissed Ed, glancing between the two sisters surreptitiously, but neither Sabriel or Lirael seemed to react to the mention of the Stone, unless it was with surprise at Ed’s own response.

“What? We have to tell them everything, brother, it’s the only way!”

“I agree” said Sabriel, a hint of sternness coming into her voice.

Ed sighed. “All right, fine. These rumours… they’re all tied up with someone called the Golden Alchemist. If he exists at all…” he rolled his eyes, “he supposedly lives in this big house in the woods, and there are all sorts of ghost stories about it, crazy ones made to scare children. I didn’t believe a single one of them, but in alchemic symbolism the Philosopher’s Stone is associated with gold, the perfect metal, so we had to give it a shot, no matter how weak the lead was.”

“Also, I thought it might be Dad” said Alphonse, very quietly.

“ _What? Al!_ Who ever said anything about him?” Still, Ed had to admit, the thought had crossed his mind too. He glowered, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Besides, if I ever did cross paths with him, it would only be to punch the bastard in the face!”

“Brother! You wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

“Try me” he muttered, clenching and unclenching his automail fist.

Al sighed, nudging him gently with an elbow. “Carry on with the story, anyway.”

Ed looked back up, and realised that Sabriel and Lirael raised their eyebrows, watching the two of them. He forced his hand flat once more, and cleared his throat, slightly abashed. “Well. We came to the house, and there was no one there, it was dark and empty. The garden was overgrown, we could barely get in through the gate. But it wasn’t locked.”

“Neither was the door” said Al, looking a little aggrieved. “We… just went in, but if anyone lived there, we're… very sorry. That was wrong of us.”

“Hey, do you want to get your body back or not?” said Ed, nudging him with a bitter smile. “Anyway it’s not like whoever lived there would have noticed a little breaking and entering. It was completely empty inside, dark and cold, or at least it was at first.”

“Then we came to the great hall” said Al, as a hush fell across the room, Sabriel and Lirael each leaning a little forward in their chairs as Al spoke. “It was dark and empty, but…” he trailed off, and Ed picked up the story again.

“We looked down, and there was a transmutation circle there, a huge one, covering the entire floor. It wasn’t one we had seen before, in all those years…” he clenched his fist, anger at himself flaring once more.

“It wasn’t for human transmutation, that was for certain” said Al. “So…” he hesitated for a second before carrying on. “So we knelt down at its edge…”

‘And we touched it. That was all it took, but there was this golden light… like nothing I’d seen before, until…" the words were hard to say. “Until I saw your _Charter magic_. And then we were here.” Ed gestured vaguely with his hand. “Or… _there_. Wherever that was, the place you found us.”

“Death, you mean” said Lirael, raising an eyebrow.

Ed scowled. “I still don’t understand how it could have been - ”

“The point is” interrupted Al, with a quelling hand on Ed’s forearm, “that we don’t know how we got here, beyond that. And we don’t know how to get back. We were hoping you’d know.”

Ed felt his hope draining away as he saw Sabriel and Lirael exchange looks in the silence that followed. He gritted his teeth, trying not to let his disappointment show. “You don’t know how to get us home.”

Sabriel sighed deeply, spreading her hands out before her. “As you entered this world, the way out may well lie in Death.” Ed and Al both started at that, but she smiled regretfully, hushing their half-born exclamations. “I have spent many years learning its intricacies; Death, almost always, is permanent, and irreversible, the transition between the worlds one way. But sometimes, when the Charter and Free Magic and fate… and perhaps, yes, whatever force drives your alchemy… align just right, then there may be loopholes, ways to make something perhaps a little more than the sum of its parts. Sometimes, just sometimes, we can slip through the accounting of the world and gain more than we put in, though the rules by which we must abide in this life are never in fact broken.”

Ed felt himself frowning, curling his hands into fists. Is she talking about cheating the Truth? He was skeptical of any claim of a loophole these days, using alchemy or otherwise; He had had too many false hopes, too many promises of a reprieve, that had come to nothing, in the end. _Only the Philosopher’s Stone, that’s the only way it might just be possible_ … “But… but Equivalent Exchange…”

“Of that, I know not” said Sabriel. “Ancelstierran science, which I learned as a girl, has a similar concept, I think, called conservation of energy. But even the laws built up around it allow for some room to manoeuvre in, without breaking them. Magic tends to… well, it either simplifies or complicates, depending on the circumstance and one’s perspective.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing is certain. And there’s still the matter of who attacked us - with Charter fire, too - when we found you.”

“Could it be a coincidence?” asked Al, hopefully.

“It _could_ be” said Sabriel. “But I don’t think it is.” Al’s shoulders drooped in disappointment, and Sabriel smiled sadly. “I do not know what this is about or why you were brought here, but I mean to find out. And I want to try to help you too, if I can.” Sabriel sighed. “Know only that I promise you nothing. It is not the job of an Abhorsen to promise people second chances. Rather the opposite; if anyone is invested in the running of the tides of Life and Death by their appointed rules, it is me.” She smiled ruefully. “All I am saying is that there _may_ be a way, if you have the will to seek it. It may well be that it is your fate to return home, and to find your bodies once more.” She smiled, truly this time. “Let’s see, shall we?”


	3. Chapter 3

_“The case of the Golden Alchemist” Mustang had said, laying a beige file from the stack on the sideboard - distinctly thinner than many of the others, Ed couldn’t help but notice - on the desk between them. “Came up about twenty years ago. Unexplained disappearances near outside the village of Taos in the southern forest. Heard of it?”_

_“No.”_

_“It’s a small place deep in what used to be logging country, but not on the main freight and passenger train lines.You’ll have to get someone to give you a lift there from Zegto, or even Woehen station.” He stilled Ed’s protest. “Don’t worry, show your pocket watch the local constabulary and they should sort everything out for you.”_

_Al scanned the map tacked to the wall, doubtfully, locating the tiny black dot near the bottom and pointing after a moment of searching. “Taos… that looks pretty inaccessible…”_

_“Yeah, and it’s one of surprisingly peaceful areas, away from the borders with Creta and Aerugo. The military doesn’t have much of a presence in the region, which is probably the reason this case hasn’t really been investigated much. That and the lack of evidence or interest.”_

_“Great.” Ed rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Colonel. But why send a state alchemist to look at twenty-year-old disappearances with no evidence? What’s it got to do with us?”_

_“That’s for you to determine, Fullmetal” said the Colonel, smiling the smug smile that Ed found so infuriating. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, I’m doing you a favour here. Hughes dug this one up from the records and wired it all the way out to me in East City, because he thought it sounded like it would be up your street.”_

_Al tilted his head. “Why?”_

_Mustang didn’t answer immediately. Instead he opened the file, his eyes scanning backwards and forwards across the lines of type. “Here we are. Winter of 1895… three outsiders appear in the village, looking for the house of someone called the Golden Alchemist. Reports differ - the accounts are confusing, apparently one of the people they interviewed was talking crazy as much as he was talking sense - but it seems like two of those people were children. Oddly, no one can agree on who the third person was. The reports are vague at best, but the local constabulary report has some interviews with eyewitnesses. Yeah, here it is. It looks like one crazy old guy - for what it’s worth - said it was ‘some kind of automaton, or metal man’.” The Colonel stared pointedly between the brothers as they exchanged looks._

_“Anyway” he continued. “The villagers tell the strangers that there aren’t any alchemists around, golden or otherwise, and, presumably, to continue to their search elsewhere. The three go into the forest - where there’s an old, abandoned house, long rumoured to be haunted - ”_

_“Bullshit” interrupted Ed. “Haunting stories are only made up to scare kids” - his eyes lit up a little then, with sudden realisation - “or to keep people away from dangerous, interesting stuff.”_

_“Right” said Mustang. “Anyway. The three go into the forest, looking for the supposedly haunted house… and disappear.”_

_“Disappear?” asked Al. “What, they just vanished?”_

_“Yeah. Never seen or heard from again. The whole thing. They even searched the woods after, but no bodies were found.”_

_“So they didn’t go back through the village” Ed said. “They went off in a different direction. Walked to the next town. Hitch-hiked. Whatever. What’s the problem? I don’t understand.”_

_“There’s nothing around there but forest for hundreds of miles in every direction” said the Colonel. “It’s one of the least populated and least accessible areas in the whole of Amestris, south of the Briggs mountains that is. Except for the house - and apparently whoever once lived there really liked their privacy - there’s not much civilisation around there. And eighteen ninety-five… that was even before the train line was completed through the forest, so there wouldn’t have been much in the way of roads, except through the village.”_

_“So what, you’re suggesting they vanished into thin air?” said Ed, raising a sceptical eyebrow. “Or do you think they’re living in the woods, twenty years later?”_

_“I have no idea” said the Colonel. “And apparently no one at the time did either, because the case was marked as inconclusive, and was closed.”_

_“So why the hell are you saddling us with it?”_

_Mustang shut the file with a snap, looking back up at them suddenly. “Because it’s_ not _closed. Not anymore, anyway. A couple of weeks ago, the villagers heard some strange sounds - screams and shouts - and saw bright golden lights coming from the forest at night. The house was the source of it.”_

_“Kids pulling pranks” grumbled Ed._

_“Maybe” said Mustang, shrugging. He closed the file and slapped it down on the desk in front of Ed. “There’s also rumours flying around the village… they say that the Golden Alchemist lives there still, or has come back. Or even came back from the dead, in some versions of the story.”_

_Ed scoffed. “People from small towns with too much time on their hands make up dumb stories like that.” His face darkened, his voice sharp and forceful. “Besides, people don’t come back from the dead.”_

_“No, well that goes without saying” the Colonel said carefully. “But there’s more. Just before the noise and lights started up at the house again a couple of weeks ago, a girl came to village. A stranger, and in a tiny place like that everyone knows each other, so they_ know _when someone’s a stranger.”_

_“So?”_

_“She came from the house. Nowhere else she could have come from. Walked around the village square, asked a few people some inconsequential questions… then went back into the woods and disappeared. No one’s seen her since.”_

_Ed scoffed. “Ghost stories. Besides, you were the one who said the witness was probably crazy.”_

_“Yes, thank you, I remember.” He tapped the file. “But wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what’s really going on? Aren’t you curious?”_

_“I am” admitted Al, as Ed passed a hand over his face and sighed in exasperated defeat._

_“Good. I expect a full report once you’ve resolved the issue, as usual.” He pushed the file a little closer to the two of them._

_Ed took the file with some distaste, flicking through the papers. “This whole thing is a waste of time.”_

_“You don’t get to make that call, Fullmetal” said Mustang, with a slight smile. “Not since you signed on as a dog of the military.”_

_Ed ground his teeth. The Colonel seemed to be enjoying this a little too much for his taste. “Fine” he snapped, tucking the file under his arm and getting to his feet. “Come on, Al. Apparently, we’ve got a train to catch.”_

_But before they could leave, Mustang had risen to his feet too and crossed the desk to stand between them and the door. Taking a look over his shoulder, he leaned forward and said in a low voice, “there’s something odd in this” he said. “I had a look at the records at the state alchemist office. Though the Golden Alchemist may sound like the name of a state alchemist, there’s never been anyone registered under that name.”_

_“So? Some jumped up idiot wanted a fancy nickname, I guess.”_

_“Yeah, maybe.” The Colonel nodded. “The origins of the name are pretty unclear. The reason I’ve sent you there - that I’ll report to Central command, that is - is that this whole case sounds like it would be plausible for me to suspect someone using their alchemy to cook up a nice personal supply of gold, which is certainly illegal anyway, but…”_

_“But you think something else is going on?” asked Al._

_“I think” said Mustang, his voice growing quieter, more conspiratorial. “That you two need to be the ones to look into this, before anyone else finds it. People supposedly coming back from the dead? Ghosts? Whatever’s going on, I think we all know how dangerous it could be, even if it’s only rumour. And you two have read a lot of textbooks on alchemy, so I’m sure you both know what else gold is symbolically associated with…”_

_Al made a quiet sound of understanding even as Ed breathed “you mean the Philosopher’s Stone?”_

_The Colonel’s mouth twisted into an ironic smile. “Glad I didn’t need to spell it out.” He raised a hand, stilling whatever protest Ed had been about to make. “Find out what’s going on and report back to me” he said. “And if it can help you in any way to get your bodies back, well…there’s no need to report back immediately, let’s say.”_

_Ed nodded, a small smile appearing on his face for the first time as the Colonel showed them to the door. “Okay. That I can work with.”_

* * *

A brisk voice startled Ed out of his reminiscence, making him nearly knock over the inkwell on the map-table in the library, Al catching his elbow before the ink could spill.

“The forest where we found you” said Sabriel, pointing at a spot on the map they were all poring over, “is on the Eastern bank of the Ratterlin, just here. Whoever cast that Charter magic, whoever attacked us - ” she paused for a moment, frowning “ - is still in hiding there, in all probability. Thus, we need to return there, and find out who or what we are facing.” She looked between Ed and Al. “Normally, it would only need be me and Lirael to make the trip, or me alone. But I am convinced that what happened that day has something to do with what brought you here, and learning about it may well show us the way to send you home. So… will you come?”

Ed grinned. “Do you even have to ask?”

Sabriel did not return his smile. “Yes, actually. Yes I do. The life of an Abhorsen is a dangerous one; our work often places us in situations where we must risk our lives for the good of the Kingdom as a whole. I would not draw you into that, unless I thought it highly likely that it would help you to achieve your goal of getting home, and even so…”

“We know” said Al, quietly.

Ed nodded. “We want to come. We…” he hesitated. “You saved us. We don’t just want to go home. Whatever this thing is, whether it’s targeting you or us, we want to help you beat it!”

Sabriel smiled, truly this time. “You have my thanks” she said, turning back to the map. “And in that case, there’s no use wasting any more time. Lirael, would you please have the sendings prepare the paperwings? I think it’s time we went to that forest to take a closer look.”

The forest was quiet, mostly, save for the tiny rustlings of small animals in the undergrowth, the sudden call of a bird making Ed flinch, though he forced himself to still the motion. The branches and trunks seemed to loom from a heavy green twilight, even less light than he had expected making it through the dense canopy to filter down to the ground.

Sabriel had drawn her sword, Ed realised, and Lirael had loosened hers in her scabbard; her other hand kept going to the bandoleer of bells across her chest, fingers brushing across their handles as she glanced about them.

Ed and Al exchanged looks.

“Perhaps we should split up?” said Lirael doubtfully, after a while. Though her voice was barely raised above a whisper, it still sounded too loud in the still air. She winced, even as she said the words.

Sabriel shook her head. “There’s no need.” She was pointing. “Look.”

Ed followed her gaze, squinting through the lacework of leaves. He had not noticed before, but, he saw now, the trees grew a little less dense there, and he could see the corner of something, the right angle leaping out at him from amidst the organic forms of the forest; the distinct gable of a roof, black against the cloudy sky. “A house?”

“Looks like it” said Al, ducking beneath a low branch, trying to see. “You think that’s where they’re hiding?”

“Could be” said Ed, “we should go and check it out, at least.” He was about to plunge forward through the undergrowth after Sabriel, when his foot dropped unexpectedly from beneath him, taking his balance away and sending him stumbling to the ground with a jolt, the tension wound up within him making him cry out aloud for just a moment, before sense and caution overtook him once more.

“Brother!” cried Al, even as Sabriel whirled around, Lirael drawing her sword fully now in a bright arc.

“Sorry” mumbled Ed, cursing his own stupidity, feeling a maddening blush of shame spreading across his face as he felt around the hole his foot had fallen into; it had been partially covered by the dense carpet of loam that covered the forest floor, but it seemed to be some sort of trench; to top off his embarrassment, it was only a little more than a foot deep, and just as wide, but his booted automail foot had gone right through.

“You’ve got to look where you’re going, brother! If that was your other leg, you could have broken your ankle, and then you wouldn’t be able to walk!” exclaimed Al. “And then where would we be?”

“Still… stuck… here” muttered Ed through gritted teeth, as he clambered out of the trench and back to his feet.

“What?”

“…Nothing.”

By now the two sisters had reached them, Lirael sheathing her sword again, both of them frowning curiously.

Ed glared back at her, folding his arms. “I’m fine.”

“He’s fine” said Al. “He just fell in a hole.”

“What?” asked Lirael, kneeling down and beginning to brush away the loam and soil.

“I told you, it’s nothing, it's…” Ed tailed off, as more of the trench became exposed. “What… why…”

“It seems to go in both directions” Sabriel said, getting down on her knees beside her sister, and helping her to shift the loose soil and rotting leaves. “How far through the forest does it go, I wonder?”

“It starts to curve” said Al, as they exposed more of the trench. “Almost like…”

Ed’s eyes widened as a thought began to come to him, still half-formed “…almost like a circle.”

“So it would seem” said Sabriel. They had uncovered more of the trench now, and it indeed curved gently, its edges dug with careful regularity. “This must have been done very recently, since the last rain. Or renewed, at the very least. The ground is so soft, it would have been completely filled up otherwise.”

“A circle…” said Al. They did not even need to exchange glances; he knew what his brother was thinking. “A transmutation circle?”

“Maybe.”

“It would have to be huge though! And what’s at the centre?”

They all turned, looking behind them and away from the curve of the circle, to where the centre should be. “The house.”

They glanced at one another. “Stay close and stay alert” said Sabriel finally, getting to her feet once more, her sword again in her hand. “Let’s go take a look.”

 

The house was large and dark in the gathering dusk, no lights shining from its windows. Shadows clung in clots to the trees about it, seeming to obscure more than they should. Or perhaps that was only Ed’s imagination. The gate arch loomed up before them, the wrought iron grille left ajar. Lirael laid a hand on it for a moment.

“Anything?” asked Sabriel, a light sparking into brilliant golden life in her hand.

“There are Charter marks…” a tiny frown creased Lirael’s brow. “Not ones I know though. No, wait, they’re not here, not right now. Somewhere not so far away though, it’s more like… a residue of a past spell than anything.”

Sabriel touched the gatepost too, though she had to let her light go to do it, so Ed could not make out her expression. “I don’t know either” she said at last, the golden brightness flaring into life again, illuminating her face. “You’re right, they’re residual, just traces really… they feel like they weren’t put into the gate itself, like they’ve drifted out from the house, over time…” she shook her head a little. “Whoever cast the original spell did it very clumsily. Either that or they had a very esoteric style of casting Charter marks.”

The gates opened before them soundlessly, the hinges apparently unrusted though ivy grew in swathes upon the front of the house, wreathing it in even more thick shadows.

Yet for all that, the door was not locked.

“Stay on your guard, all of you” said Sabriel, and shouldered it open, with her sword arm. Her other hand, Ed had noticed, often lingered on the seven leather cases of the bandoleer that hung across her chest, the ones that held those bells, as Lirael’s did with her own set. He tried not to let himself shudder at the memory of how their power had gripped him, held him in place; it had not been a pleasant experience to be so controlled, despite the kindness that Sabriel had shown him since.

He frowned, transmuting his automail to his familiar blade and raising it before him as they entered the house, following Al through the great studded wooden doors. But even as they stepped into the hallway, Al stopped short before him, causing Ed to collide with him with a clatter of metal.

He cursed, realising he had bitten his lip and wincing as he tasted blood. “Ah! Watch where you’re going, Al - ”

That was when he broke off, startled into silence too by what he saw.

“Shh! Quiet - ” Lirael was saying, but Ed was not listening.

“It's… it’s the same” Al was saying, disbelief in his voice. “Isn’t it, brother? It’s the same as the house we came… here from.”

“Yeah” breathed Ed, as they passed through the doors into the great hall, Sabriel and Lirael forgotten for the moment. “Yeah, I think so.”

“But how is that possible?”

He shook his head. “No idea.” _But, apparently, it is_.

It really _was_ the same; disconcertingly so, Ed thought, as he looked walked behind Al and Sabriel through the silent hallway. The moon was rising, and moonlight slanted through the mullioned windows in the hallway. _Even as it had then, a world away_ …

“The main hall - that’s where the circle was - should be through that door.” Al was pointing, and Sabriel and Lirael looked at him in confusion, but did not argue. They seemed to see that this was important, that this mattered, without Ed even having to explain, for which he was grateful. He could not even begin to explain it to himself, let alone to anyone else. Not without sounding painfully unscientific, even to his own ears.

 _Yet who knew what was true now, after all that had happened_. The uncomfortable thought bloomed in his mind even as Sabriel pushed open the door to the main hall, but he tucked it away to think on later, though his whole being protested against it.

Ed caught his breath as the door swung aside.

There was the hall, the galleries, the moonlight flooding in through the windows to fall upon the polished wooden floor in bright rectangles.

And there… there was the circle, the gold paint drawn of most of its colour in the silver light. But he knew its exact shade of gold.

“That circle…” said Ed. He knelt down beside it. Before, he had barely had time to take a proper look at the transmutation circle, before the ground had been deconstructed from beneath their feet, caught in that golden vortex of light. Now, he knelt by its edge, peering closely at it. “Al, do you recognise any of this?”

Al knelt beside him, shaking his head. “Hardly anything. Do you?”

Ed frowned. “It’s not like any transmutation circle I’ve ever seen in a textbook. Or anywhere.”

“Except _there_.”

“Except there.” He ran his hand over the golden paint. “Look… _terra_ … the symbol for earth…” he pointed. “But there are two of them…”

“Yeah… kind of laid over each other, like…”

“Like two worlds that overlap each other!” exclaimed Ed, looking at the crossed circles in excitement. They were at angles to one another, offset so that they resembled the spokes of a great wheel, almost. His eyes went to its centre, and he noticed something else. “And look, there… light, or fire… and there… _aurum_ … gold…”

“Yeah” said Al. “That one comes up a lot.”

 _The Golden Alchemist? Was that what it meant?_ He thought of Sabriel and Lirael, and the golden light they had wielded in battle, the burst of it that had come from the forest when they first arrived. “It does. But look, around the edge there are all these symbols I’ve never seen before…” Ed pointed.

“Those are Charter marks” broke in Sabriel. He had almost forgotten she was there, but she and Lirael seemed to be watching in fascinated silence as the brothers knelt by the circle, talking in quiet voices. “They are… old ones, rarely used. Three master marks, even.” She was shaking her head. “These marks… they’re too powerful for everyday uses, dangerous and impractical…”

“So whoever was using them had a purpose in mind” said Lirael. “An ambitious one, for which only master marks would suffice.”

Sabriel was kneeling beside Ed and Al now, scrutinising the marks intently. “This spell… quite apart from your alchemy seemingly being _part_ of it, it’s odd. I don’t understand it. There are marks for light, for burning and blasting, the type of fire we were attacked with… it should rise in a kind of halo, or a whirlpool. It’s a fairly standard spell, but that’s not even the beginning. There’s something much bigger here, and I think the fire and blasting marks are a cover, a blind.”

“What else is there, then?”

“It’s a spell for transporting something, moving it from one place to another… or so I would say usually, but this here… she ran her hand over a cluster of marks, near the outer edge of the circle. "These marks… I’ve never known them used by anyone other than a necromancer. No one… no one else should need to.”

“Why?” asked Ed, turning to look. “What are they? What do they mean?”

“These marks are used in certain spells, which are designed to force another through the boundary between Life and Death. They open a road, if you like, a temporary doorway, without the need for recent deaths in that place. For an Abhorsen, it can be useful for banishing a Dead creature that is… _resistant_ to returning, or it can aid in returning to Life, if there is something barring the way. Luckily that hardly ever happens, as the living body calls the spirit back to Life, but…” she was shaking her head. “I don’t know what to think anymore. Seeing you two enter this world bodily, through Death, well… it’s made me rethink what I know of such things already.”

“But this makes sense!” said Al. “This…” he gestured at the circle on the floor. “Two worlds laid over each other… you said we came through Death…” his voice faltered a little, as though he could still barely believe what he was saying. “If you’re right, then surely this would explain how we were brought here!”

“It still doesn’t explain why you came out of Death where you did” said Lirael. “I was waiting on the edge of the forest, not near this house. Sabriel and I didn’t even get this far into the woods when we met you.”

“We must have gone some distance parallel to the river” said Sabriel, musingly. “And my body was with you, Lirael. And if these two crossed bodily, it wouldn’t matter where - physically - they came in anyway. Or rather, it would be a meaningless question, because they had no bodies in our world to return to, so they would come out at the same point as I led them to. Besides…” she was pacing now, staring down, genuine curiosity and something like wonder in her eyes. “Something like that must have marks to control the location… I wonder how it works…”

“I suppose that makes sense…” Lirael was saying, as Sabriel gave the marks a closer look, “…so you’re suggesting that this alchemy, from their world, has been combined with Charter magic, to make a path between the worlds, passing through Death?”

“As far as I can gather” said Sabriel, still looking down at the circle. “My only question is…”

“My only question is, who made it?” said Ed. “And who activated it? When we were back in… our world… I knelt by the side of the circle, yeah, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t transmute, or… anything. Neither did Al. We just took a look.”

“My guess is that your circle was activated automatically. This Charter spell is likely designed to combine with alchemy, as an activator for the transmutation circle, perhaps? I’ve never seen anything at all like this before, so I can’t be quite sure, but from what I can understand of the spell, the master mark reacts to the presence of humans, and it ties the whole thing together. That was probably why it began to take effect when you stepped onto the circle. But it’s strange that it’s so one-sided…”

“Yeah! Why can we touch it now, without being sent home? Is it a one-way street?”

“I don’t think that’s the reason” said Sabriel, frowning, kneeling to touch the floor. “I think…” she stroked the painted Charter marks upon the floor, dim and lifeless. “I think… there is supposed to be another master mark. Another, to tie it all together, but it’s been lost. Perhaps when you were sent through, it broke down the spell some…”

Al was nodding. “Equivalent exchange. It would take a huge amount of energy to send the two of us through, so the spell itself must have paid the toll, and now it’s broken.”

“Great” said Ed. “We blundered right into a trap then?”

“It might not have been a trap” said Al.  "Maybe they didn’t mean for anyone else to use it.“

"Then why put it in the middle of their front room, for anyone to just walk into?”

“Well, we did break into someone’s house…”

“Hey, no we didn’t!” Ed flared. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it…” He hung his head. “…Eh, I guess we did.”

Sabriel was largely ignoring this exchange, pacing backwards and forwards again, her hands clasped before her in thought. “A spell like this would have to be renewed every time someone wanted to pass through the door it created, or every few times, depending, perhaps, on the number of people being sent across. Two at once was likely too much, causing the master mark to falter.”

“And no one replaced it” said Ed, his heart sinking. “Could you fix it, though? Could you send us home?”

“I _think_ I could” said Sabriel carefully. “The spell has… peculiarities that I would need to take some time to understand, lest I risk hurting you or banishing you permanently into Death, but in theory there’s no reason why it couldn’t be done, particularly since the circle is already here, so I don’t need to worry about that part… only fixing the spell. Lirael would need to help me in any case, for the mark I need is dangerous for a single Charter mage, even a strong one.” She paused in her pacing and looked at them with those piercing dark eyes. “First though, I’d like to know all else you may have to tell of your experience, so I can clear this up once and for all. If someone is combining your alchemy with Charter magic to open a way between your world and ours, that is the business of the Abhorsen, especially if the road leads through Death. I mean to investigate this further, and in doing so I hope I will also be able to find a way to send you two home.”

“And there’s still the matter of who attacked us, outside the forest” said Lirael. “I wonder if - ” but she broke off, at a sound they all heard, loud in the silent house.

_Tap._

_Tap tap_.

“What is that?”

It seemed to be coming from up above, from the gallery that bordered the deep well of a room, the quiet but unmistakable tapping of - _something_ \- on polished wood.

 _Tap tap_.

“Is it footsteps?” whispered Al.

“Maybe.”

Ed tried to crane upwards, to follow the sound, but there was no light up there; all he could see were conglomerations of shadow, which could hide anything. Lirael held her light higher, gingerly, beginning to draw her sword with the other hand even as she cast about for the source of the sound. Sounds echoed oddly in here - even as they had in the house Ed and Al had left, back in the house in the woods outside Taos - and it was very difficult to tell where it was coming from. The four of them stood back to back now, ready for the slightest sign of danger, tensed to fight.

“What are you doing in my house?”

The voice startled them all. It seemed to come from high above, or from nowhere, for Ed could see no hint of movement in the blackness.

“What are you doing? Who are you? Go away!”

The voice was high and thin and reedy, rising in almost petulant anger at the end.

“Look! There!” exclaimed Al suddenly, pointing up to the top of the stairs which descended in a delicate spiral from the balcony. He faltered. “Is that…”

They all turned to look.

At first, Ed could see nothing, the shadows too thick. Then - was that a glint of gold? Yes, there is was, reflecting the Charter lights, the bright glint of a nose, a forehead, a wide mouth, almost grotesquely distorted. Empty black holes for eye sockets. _A creature of nightmare, something barely alive… no, it shouldn’t be here, it was bad enough to see the nightmares when he fell asleep_ …

He sighed with relief then, as realisation struck.

A mask. It was only a person in a golden mask.

He was just about to say as much, squinting into the gloom, trying to see, when Lirael let out a sudden, strangled exclamation, her voice filled with panic, words falling one over another.

“Sabriel! It's… it’s _her!_ ”

“Her?”

“It’s Chlorr!”

“That’s not possible. Chlorr is gone, and will not return.”

“But…” Lirael tailed off, her eyes wide, fixed on one spot. _The outlines of that shining golden face… was it a face, after all? No, it truly was a mask, of gold or bronze, reflecting the glow of Lirael’s Charter light in burnished yellow_.

“Who’s Chlorr?” he asked, but no one answered him.

A light, flaring into brilliance, as the golden reflection blazed suddenly down at them, caught in the light. “What are you doing here? Who are you?” That voice again, high and scratchy.

But before he could pay much more attention, Sabriel’s voice broke into his thoughts, much closer, more urgent. “Lirael” she was saying, at her sister’s side now. “Lirael, Lirael, it’s not her, that’s not her voice - ”

“It is her! She's… she’s come back for me!” Lirael, to his surprise, had shed her cool composure, and was staring, wide-eyed and frozen, up at the balcony, as Sabriel came to her side and tried to gently touch her arm. But Lirael shook her off, her voice rising high, choked by sudden, pure panic. “It’s not over, they’ve found us, Chlorr and Hedge and… and… they want…”

“No, Lirael. There’s no Free Magic. Pay attention, you can’t sense any, can you?”

“I… I… n-no, it’s her, and It will be there too, It will return, we failed…”

“Lirael! it’s a trick, the Destroyer and all its servants are gone and are never coming back. Do you understand?”

“They’re here!” Lirael’s voice hitched in a sob, between fast, choking breaths. “They're… coming for me, they’re going to take me away, it will have all been for nothing…”

That thin, high voice again, descending the stairs, the mask looming golden-bright out of the darkness. “What are you doing here? Go away!”

Lirael seemed not to hear the words though; she only had eyes for the golden reflections cast from the light gripped in her free hand, making a fist so that the light shone out in bars. Ed exchanged a glance with Al, who was reaching out to the girl, who had now fallen to her knees on the floor, her sword dropped at her side, even as Sabriel stood before her, a furious expression on her face as she looked up at the person watching them from the stairs. Sabriel had her sword raised, Charter marks rippling down it like fire.

“What are you doing in my house?”

The eyes, the black holes in the golden face looking down at them… they were so empty, but, Ed found, he couldn’t tear his gaze away. Neither could Lirael, her face draining of blood as she looked, her eyes wide. Even Sabriel looked doubtful. _Whatever this thing is_ , Ed thought, _they’ve clearly met something like it before_. And by their reactions alone, it was something very bad indeed.

“Get out of here! Go away!”

Several things happened at once then. First, Lirael let out a high, thin sob, of pure fear and pain, her eyes seeming to look far away. Al leaned forward, placing his hand gingerly on Lirael’s clenched fist for a moment, whispering something to her too low for Ed to hear.

She stared at him for a long, long moment, with wide, haunted eyes, and he returned her gaze. After a matter of seconds - that nevertheless seemed to stretch on for days - she gave a tiny nod.

Then the light in Lirael’s hand went out.


	4. Chapter 4

At first, as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness - for the moonlight was a scant brilliance in comparison to Lirael’s blazing golden Charter light from a moment ago - all Ed was aware of was sound, the quiet breathy sounds of several people trying to stay as quiet as possible, the  clank of Al’s armour as he shifted slightly.

Then he could see again, the moonlight casting everything in silver; dimmer, true, but still enough. He looked up at the place where the voice had come from, up on the balcony; nothing. The mask of gold, and whoever - or whatever - was wearing it, seemed to have receded back into the shadows. But at least whatever that was was not attacking them, he thought. That was something. Now, if they could only manage to calm Lirael down, for they needed all the strength they had…

Remembering Lirael, he looked back at her. She was still kneeling upon the ground before them, Al at her side. Her neck was cricked back at a painful angle, her eyes wide, but as he watched some of the panic that he had seen there before began to ebb away. He saw tears on her face, though she made no sound, simply letting them fall. After a long, long period of silence - or so it seemed, time stretching out beyond Ed’s ability to tell how many minutes had passed - she hauled herself to her feet without a word, levering herself up with her sword, refusing the hand that Al offered.

Sabriel still stood on guard between them and the place where their attacker had been - likely still was, must still be, though unseen - and Ed moved so that he was standing on their other side, guarding their back.

“What are you doing in my house?”

That voice again. Ed winced, even as he turned and saw Lirael flinch violently behind him. But this time she did not turn away.

“Who are you?” she said, clearing her throat, her voice straining, threatening to crack. But it did not. “What do you want?”

“Go away! Everyone was supposed to leave me alone now! Get out! Go away!”

Lirael frowned. Ed could see her hand clench, almost making a fist, and he wondered whether she was debating making a new light to see into the shadows by. _But then there would be that reflection, light glancing off hard metal features, a terrible face in the darkness_ … Lirael didn’t _want_ to look, to see, but she was steeling herself though to do what must be done. Ed could tell that much, and suddenly he felt a renewed pang of sympathy.

“I’ll ask again” she said. “Who are you?” She held her sword up in her golden right hand, the blade now running with bright Charter marks. They were not enough to pierce the deepest shadows, not enough to reveal that glow of reflected light that had pierced into her very soul before, but they cast some light, at least.

No answer.

“Who are you? Tell me!”

“Lirael - ” began Sabriel, edging over to the others, but broke off.

Lirael was letting her hand fill with golden Charter glow once more, casting a spreading pool of bright, warm light throughout the room. All of them turned to the place at the gallery’s edge where the masked figure had been before, raising weapons and hands in readiness.

There was nothing there.

Ed cursed, whirling around quickly, but his heart was sinking; he knew it was to be expected, that whatever it was had had plenty of time to make its escape while the lights were out. _It could be anywhere by now_ …

“Everyone get down!” Lirael’s voice, rising high in alarm, broke into his thoughts, even as Lirael dropped her sword and grabbed his arm, pulling him to the floor to slide painfully across the floorboards. Ed skidded to a halt on his knees on the polished wood, his right knee exploding in pain, torn and bloody, his automail leg scraping against the wood and leaving a deep gouge. He threw out his hand instinctively for balance, and then to break his fall, but his arm blade only raked across the floor, leaving another deep gash in the wood, yet making his landing no softer. But his fall had not been a moment too late, Ed realised, for above them - exactly where they had been standing a mere moment before - a blast of that golden fire exploded, the heat palpable as the blast ignited the air about it, setting regular flames dancing in the air even after the smokeless, brighter ones had dissipated, twisting away into nothing.

“Damn it!” Ed picked himself up, craning around to look for Al even as Lirael was grabbing her dropped sword and springing back to her feet, immediately at Sabriel’s side. “How did it get over there?” The blast had come from behind them, this time, on the opposite side of the surrounding gallery; it must be fast, he realised, to get all the way around the large hall so quickly.

He winced as another blast of fire came, this one missing him and Lirael by inches. It came between the two of them, and Al and Sabriel. But in the moments before his vision was blocked out by blinding brightness, Ed caught sight of Al throwing himself in front of Sabriel, shielding her from the licking flames. “Al!” he yelled, for though he knew his brother was able to withstand a lot, he always feared whenever Al put himself between someone else and danger. Ed simply couldn’t help it; it looked too much like self-sacrifice for him to bear. “Al! Alphonse! Are you…”

“Here, brother!” came Al’s voice, as the flames cleared. “Ah! Your coat’s on fire!”

Ed exclaimed in anger and alarm as he spun around and saw that Al was right. He batted at his coat tails, beating away the flames that had caught the edge of the fabric.

“We can’t carry on like this” Sabriel said through gritted teeth. “Lirael! Please can you help me make a diamond of protection? I’ve never used one against opposing Charter magic before, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t shield us…”

“Shield, huh?” said Ed, ducking and smelling the distinct scent of singed hair. That had been a narrow escape, he realised. He looked over at Sabriel and Lirael, who both had their swords out, standing back to back, each concentrating on drawing a Charter mark on the ground. “Al” he said, “we may not be able to do… magic… but we can probably help with that, can’t we?”

Al was already drawing a circle on the ground. “Sure.”

“If I can do anything in this crazy upside-down world, I can do this” muttered Ed, as he clapped his hands together, before slamming them down to the ground. Immediately a wall rose up around them, out of the floor, surrounding the four of them and the makings of Sabriel and Lirael’s diamond too.

Sabriel looked up in surprise, then nodded at them. “Thank you. That was certainly quicker.”

“But we’re trapped now!” protested Lirael, leaning back to look up to the circle of ceiling they could see above the top of the wall. “That… that thing is out there, and we can’t get out!”

“Yeah, but at least it can’t get us for the moment.” Ed hesitated. “Do you know what it is? What it wants?”

Sabriel shook her head wearily. “It’s human, I know that much - ”

“Doesn’t really narrow it down much” muttered Ed.

“Actually, it does” said Sabriel. “And it certainly should be reassuring that we’re not fighting one of the Dead, or a creature of Free Magic. However, it is also true that our bells are designed precisely for use against such enemies… and a human that attacks two Abhorsens and their associates using Charter magic is an unknown quantity.”

“Well, why not ask what it wants?” asked Al, all of them wincing as another fire blast appeared over the walls of their little impromptu fortress, blackening the ceiling above with ash.

“I don’t think it’s in a talking mood” said Lirael darkly. “Besides, it’s difficult if we can’t even - ” she winced, as yet another ball of golden Charter fire lit the air above them, that voice starting again. It was no longer speaking in words, either, but emitting a high, enraged-sounding shriek. “…if we can’t even go near it without being burned to cinders.”

Ed realised just too late what was coming next, moments before Al spoke. “Well, then it sounds like we need someone who can’t get burned, don’t we?”

Sabriel looked back at him speculatively. “Do you mean to try?”

Al hesitated for a moment. “Yeah” he said at last. “Yeah. We know it can’t harm me with those fire blasts - ”

Ed blanched, interrupting his brother. “Al, no, didn’t you hear Sabriel? We don’t know what else it can do - ”

“And there’s not much else it can do to me either. Maybe I can get it to talk to us.”

“Al…”

Al turned to Ed, who was standing their with his arms hanging at his sides, feeling powerless. “Brother, I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in five minutes, no more, I promise.”

Ed was about to protest more, but Sabriel gave him a quelling look, before turning back to Al with a nod. “Good luck, Alphonse Elric. You have our sincerest gratitude, especially as you were never supposed to become involved in the battles of the Abhorsen. Now go, and come back quickly.”

He nodded to her respectfully, before turning back to Ed, gesturing at the wall before them. “Brother, I need some stairs, and the circle would take too long. Could you please transmute some for me?”

“….If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

“For the record, I think this is a bad idea. Let me go instead - ”

“No. The whole point is that the flames can’t harm me! I’ll be right back.” Al clasped Ed’s hand in both of his. “I promise.”

Ed stared back at him for a long time, but, he knew, his brother would not change his mind. And so he gave a resigned sigh, and nodded. Then he clapped his hands together, and placed them on the inside of the wall. The transmutation at least was easy enough. The wall began to curve outwards; he drew up extra material from the ground to support the structure, even as a set of stairs began to form, complete with an elaborately carved handrail. When the staircase hit the balcony, he stopped, drawing his hands back and shoving them unhappily into his pockets.  

“Thanks” said Al brightly.

“Ask what manner of creature it is, and what it wants” said Sabriel. “Tell it that we mean it no harm, but we will fight for our own lives and for the defence of the Kingdom, if a threat is posed.”

Al nodded. “I will.” Then he turned and ran up the stairs without only a fleeting backward glance.

Ed’s eyes followed him, up the stairs and over the edge of the balcony. It was only when he couldn’t see Al anymore that he noticed that Lirael was looking at him in some concern. For a while he let her watch him, glad to note that her breathing seemed to be slowing to normal and becoming less erratic. The wild panic that had filled her before seemed to have eased, for now at least, and for that much he was glad, though the pained shadows under her eyes were still evident.

She was still staring at him, too, he realised, in something like _concern_ , of all things. “What?” he snapped, annoyed suddenly.

“Nothing” said Lirael. “It’s just… it’s a brave thing your brother is doing. He didn’t ask to get caught up in this, and neither did you.”

“Of course he’s brave, he’s Alphonse” said Ed, bristling at her words, though it was more nervousness than real anger. “And damn right we didn’t ask to get caught up in this. All we want is to get back and - Al!” He cried out in alarm, as there was another ear-splitting shriek, and a renewed blast of golden fire exploded overhead. A moment later there was a deafening crash and clatter of metal on wood and a yell that could only be Alphonse’s. “What… what’s going on?” demanded Ed, suddenly frustrated by the wall still mostly surrounding the three of them; it felt uncomfortably like a trap. “I can’t see!”

“We’ve got to get out of here and fight back” said Sabriel, her voice filled with sudden foreboding. “….Out! Now!”

Ed wasted no time; he transmuted a door in the wall at their side. No sooner had he wrenched it open and the three of them were through, a blast of golden Charter fire ricocheted from the ceiling, before cascading downwards into the little circle of Ed’s transmuted walls. If they had still been standing there, he did not like to think what would have become of them, but Ed felt a sense of triumph at their narrow escape. “Ha!” He muttered. “You need to improve your aim next time. Even Colonel Bastard could do better than that.”

“Stop criticising our enemy’s aim and help us fight!” Lirael yelled at him, as they all ducked, in the lee of the wall still. Sabriel had risen and was at one side, a ball of her own golden fire forming between her hands even as Ed watched. She stepped out into the open, threw it upwards at the balcony where there enemy must be, then ducked back behind the wall as it exploded there.

“Its aim though” Sabriel said, as she rejoined them as though nothing had happened a moment later, “is an interesting question. It is powerful, extremely so, but erratic, did you notice? That spell cast with that strength - in the hands of an adept - should have burned us all to ashes by now.”

“So why hasn’t it?” asked Ed, craning around once more to see if he could see Al, but he couldn’t. He must be on the other side of the walls. Where their attacker was…

“I don’t know. Maybe it is unskilled.”

“Seems pretty skilled to me.”

“Raw, unchanneled power is a very different thing from skill, or finesse” said Sabriel, “especially when it comes to casting Charter magic.”

“I thought you might know that from your alchemy too” added Lirael, mildly. “But it seems not.”

“Hey! I have skill and finesse! You don’t know what you’re talking about - ”

“You two!” snapped Sabriel. “Stop. Lirael, with me. Edward, go get your brother. We’ll cover you.”

He nodded, taking a deep breath. Then he plunged out from behind the half-fallen wall.

He braced himself to dodge a fireball, but it did not come. Instead he was relieved to see Al, picking himself up from the ground below the farther gallery.

“Brother!” shouted Al, catching sight of him at last. “Over here! I’m fine, but it… _she_ , attacked me, blew up the part of the balcony I was standing on. I panicked, I’m sorry…”

Ed brushed aside his apology, his eyes widening in alarm. “You fell all that way?”

“It’s only one storey” Al shouted back at him across the hall. “And it’s not as if falling can harm me. But I’m sorry, I couldn’t get any information, I didn’t even get to -  Ed, look out!”

A crash, another blast of heat, accompanied by a small explosion of plaster dust and splintered wood.

“ _Leave. Me. Alone._ ” The shrieks from above were accompanied by renewed blasts of fire on each word, its swirling, unnatural golden quality doing nothing to detract from its scorching heat, the air suddenly like a furnace. The railing of the balcony was on fire now, a large section of it blown outwards, thick black smoke billowing from the spot, burning debris falling all around from above.

Ed was unharmed, for he had hastily transmuted a wall. It was thin though, all he had had time to raise, and already it was cracking from the heat, baking in the flames. But even as he thought this, Sabriel and Lirael were appearing on either side of him, shooting back with golden fire to equal their attacker’s.

“Hey, that wasn’t too bad” said Ed, smiling gratefully at them.

Lirael returned his smile, hers tentative and wan still, but Sabriel did not share their levity. “Edward! Is that staircase you made still sound?” she demanded.

“Should be” he said, frowning. “I can reinforce it though…”

“Be quick” she said, though he was already beginning to transmute the ground once more. “I’m going up there. This has to stop.”

He nodded quickly. “Yes, Ma'am!”

The staircase reinforced, Sabriel stood for a moment, her sword held up before her, Charter marks glowing with brilliance in counterpoint to the blade’s reflections of the little fires burning all around them. Then she set her other hand on her bells, and turned to the stairs.

“She’ll be fine” said Ed, looking over to where Lirael was gazing up after her sister, ashen-faced and almost frozen again, as though she were struggling with herself not to drag Sabriel back.

Lirael tore her gaze away. “I know.” Then immediately she stepped back, colliding unintentionally with their defensive wall, half stumbling as she stared upwards, her whole body tense as a coiled spring.

There it was, once more. The golden mask, its wearer standing now at the edge of the balcony, right in Sabriel’s path. The light was still dim, but the burnished glow of bronze - or perhaps gold - was unmistakable, the features seeming to twist and move in the dancing light of the little fires that now burned all around, natural fire ignited by the magical version as it made contact with anything that could burn.

“Sabriel!” shouted Lirael, her relative calm of the moments before suddenly ebbing away all at once. “Come back, come back, please, it’s here, it’s _Her_ …”

“Shh!” hissed Ed. “She… she knows what she’s doing, she knows that - ” he grabbed her arm as she tried to throw herself after Sabriel, just barely catching her sleeve, his left hand’s flesh-and-blood fingers slipping from her golden metal and Charter magic ones. For a moment she turned back to him in anger, tears starting at the corners of her eyes, her other hand raised as though to begin casting a Charter mark. But the mark - whether it was meant to strike Ed or the enemy - never came, for she seemed to see something in his eyes, then. Slowly, she dropped her hand, and he dropped his, and both of them looked up to the balcony.

“Reveal yourself” said Sabriel, her hand on her bells. “I am the Abhorsen, and you are trying to hurt my kin and my friends. What Charter mage would do such a thing?”

“Go away!” came the voice, rising in pitch and desperation once more. “No one wants you here.”

“Yet here I will remain, until you answer my questions” said Sabriel, with icy calm.

A wordless shriek, then another blast of fire. This time Sabriel was clearly prepared; she deftly blocked the flames, a small bright shield of shimmering gold billowing from her outstretched hand. Fragile as it looked, it apparently held back the worst of the blast at short range, cutting a wake through the path of the fire. “ _Listen_ to me” said Sabriel. “You are powerful, but unschooled in Charter magic. There is no reason for you to attack us…” she raised her shield once more, blocking the worst of the next explosion of golden-bright shimmering fire. “But you must stop using Charter magic to destroy. And I would ask that you tell us what you know of this house. It is of great… personal relevance to some friends of mine, and - ”

She broke off mid-sentence at the rumbling in the ground below her, but Ed could see what she could not. F _or there was someone else there, below the balcony on which the two were fighting_ … still, he had to hold Lirael back to keep her from running to her sister’s aid, as a smile began to spread across his face. “It’s alright” he said. “Al’s got this.”

Sure enough, a column had begun to rise from the ground below the balcony, breaking after a moment through its floor and fanning out into a neat spiral staircase. It caught the masked attacker off guard, though, coming up right below them, forcing them to spring out of the way a little too hastily, misjudging the step and stumbling over a pile of debris.

It was all the chance Sabriel needed, and she took it, pulling out a bell and swinging it in an elegant figure-of-eight motion, the sound causing the masked figure to freeze in place. Even Ed felt its effects a little, far off as he was.

“Come” said Sabriel, with a sigh. “This balcony is about to collapse. We should go downstairs to speak, at the very least.”

And, as they watched in disbelief, Sabriel led the masked figure by the hand to the staircase Al had made. Their attacker - considerably smaller and slighter than they had appeared before, Ed noted, not actually that much taller than a child - seemed to move in jerky bursts, as though fighting some compulsion, but went easily enough. As soon as they reached the bottom, Sabriel nodded at her sister, and immediately Lirael was running to her side, Ed and Al right at her heels from opposite ends of the hall.

“Good one with the stairs, Al” said Ed.

“It was all I could think of” said Al. “I’m glad it worked so well.”

“Shh!” said Lirael. “Look!”

Ed drew his attention back to the scene before him and stared, as Sabriel held the small figure at arm’s length by the lapel of a tattered old too-large jacket. Her other hand still held her sword, her whole stance guarded, as Lirael held up a golden globe of light.

“Now, before I release you from the hold of Saraneth, as a gesture of goodwill” said Sabriel carefully, “I would have you do one more thing. Take off your mask.”

For a long moment, nothing. Then, with halting, jerking motions, hands came up to that small face. That made them all start, bracing for a sudden attack, but there was no blast of golden Charter fire, no explosion, no destruction. Instead the hands went behind the figure’s head, lingering there for a moment, working at the straps that held the mask in place.

After a moment, the mask fell. It bounced to the floor, the sound falling strangely flat, deadened even against the hardwood floor.

But Ed was not paying attention to that. His mouth dropped open a little as he took in a small face, eyes that squeezed closed against the sudden brightness of a shaft of moonlight - small hands immediately coming up to pull up a ragged shawl, so oversized about small shoulders that it was more of a cloak - to shadow the features again.

Alphonse was the first one to speak, his voice dubious. “A… a child? A girl?”

It was hard to tell how old she was, truly. She could perhaps have even been his own age, Ed thought, though with her wild auburn hair, torn, ill-fitting clothes, and dark eyes that were large and wide and frightened in an angular, half-starved looking face, she looked much younger than she likely was. She had a Charter mark on her forehead, he noticed, though it looked different to Sabriel and Lirael’s; it was irregularly formed, as though drawn by a shaking hand, and instead of the bright luminescence that their marks gave off it seemed to shift and flicker fitfully.

“It… it would seem so” said Sabriel, a note of suspicion nevertheless lingering in her voice. Ed noticed that her grip on the child’s jacket had grown no looser, the tension still there in her stance and in her face. When she spoke though, her voice was not unkind. “Child, can you tell us your name? What are you doing here? Who are you?”

But as Sabriel moved forward, loosening her grip slightly, the dark-eyed girl twisted suddenly and violently away, with a snarl like a feral animal caught in a trap. But even as she tried to move away, she slipped and fell on the dropped mask, her shawl slipping down and twisting about her. It was faded blue, Ed saw now, worn and threadbare, though like all her other mismatched clothes it had been clumsily mended many times, the intricate woven pattern twisted and broken up by stitches upon haphazard stitches.

She was quick to recover though, and to slip away from the four of them. With a wild screech of anger and fear that sounded barely human, she scrambled to her feet, slipping between Ed and Lirael, mask in hand. Without warning, she held it aloft, and, with all her strength, hurled it straight at Sabriel’s head. “Leave me _alone_!”

But even as the words left her mouth, her shoulders seemed to sag, as though in defeat. Sabriel dodged the mask, retrieving it calmly from where it had clattered once more to the floor, the girl’s skinny frame shuddered, hunching over and covering her face. After a moment, she curled up on her knees on the debris-strewn floor and began to sob, great, choking, wracking sobs, tears streaming from her eyes and running down her flushed and blotchy cheeks.

Ed, Al and Lirael exchanged looks of shock; Ed hadn’t known what he was expecting of their attacker, but it wasn’t this.

Sabriel did not blanch; she immediately knelt down beside the girl and wrapped an arm about her shoulders, though, Ed noticed, she also kept hold of the girl’s wrist, holding her gently but firmly in place. “Lirael, could you please…” she began, motioning to her sister to bring the light.

But even as she began to speak, Lirael caught her breath.

“Sabriel… I…” she was staring in disbelief, and not a little pain. “The blue… I think… I’m fairly certain… she’s a Southerling.”

Sabriel blinked, looking back down at the girl, who was hissing through her teeth now, trying to scratch and bite although her hands were pinned. She had sheathed her sword, in order to grasp both of the girl’s wrists and still her panicked, furious struggling; and Ed knew that the golden fire that had exploded from those hands was not far from her mind. It was on his mind too, though he could barely reconcile the deadly golden Charter flames with this frightened, fragile-looking little girl. But no sooner had that thought began to come to his mind, then he was decisively banishing it again; she had still attacked them, had done most of the damage that filled the room. And she was still somehow involved in all this, the house in the woods with the strange transmutation circle, the two of them being transported here, wherever here really was. _And she might even know something about this Golden Alchemist_ …

“I am sorry for this” said Sabriel, sighing. Her voice drew Ed back to the present. “But I am just going to have to…”

Quicker than Ed could think, Lirael elbowed him in the side. “Cover your ears!” she hissed at him, before doing so herself. In the time that it took him to think that, Sabriel had moved, quickly and deftly; in a single, fluid motion, she had let go of the girl’s wrists, transferred both to her other hand, and pulled the smallest bell from the bandoleer that hung across her chest, ringing it in a circular motion, its sound coming sweet and clear. Though Ed pressed his hands over his ears as quickly as he could, he was not quick enough, its sound catching in his ears, filling his head with a thick, soft drowsiness. He fought against it, blinking furiously and biting down on his lip to keep himself from stumbling. But his head was full of that sweet lullaby, clouding his vision, making his chin fall forward onto his chest. After a moment he was on his knees, but before he could tip forward he felt cold metal arms take his weight, his brother’s cry of alarm sounding loud in his ears.

That was enough. Ed shook his head angrily, throwing himself back to consciousness with every bit of his will. He gritted his teeth, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. He frowned, bleary-eyed, realising he had slipped halfway to his knees and probably would have fallen to the floor if Al had not been supporting him under his arms.

“Brother, you could have impaled yourself on your blade!” Al was saying, worry in his voice.

“Well don’t blame me! Blame these people and their…” he gestured angrily. “Weird mind-control bells. Whatever it is.” He glared around at Lirael, seeing her uncovering her ears, then back at his Al, indignant. “Hey, how come it didn’t get you?”

“My body can’t sleep, remember? I think that’s why.”

“…Oh” he said in a small voice. But he pushed aside the familiar stab of guilt, to turn and scowl at Sabriel instead. “Damn it, warn me next time you…” Ed tailed off.

Sabriel was cradling the strange girl in her arms, who seemed to be asleep, her chest rising and falling quite peacefully, as Sabriel carefully returned the tiny bell to its leather pouch.

Lirael came closer, raising her light to illuminate the sleeping face of their attacker. “This is the one who did all that…?” she looked skeptical, and Ed didn’t blame her. Suddenly, she leaned down, her eyes catching on the mask that had fallen forgotten to the floor. She picked it up almost gingerly, seeming for a moment reluctant to touch it, but as she held it, her posture relaxed. “It's… it’s made of carven wood, painted with gold” said Lirael, in some surprise, and obvious relief. “Some sort of replica. Not even a very good one…”

“A replica of what?” asked Al.

Lirael gave him a long, measured look, then sighed. “Before… once… there was a necromancer called Chlorr, a very old, powerful one. Or at least she _was_ a necromancer, once.” She suppressed a slight shudder. “Until…”

Sabriel picked up where her sister left off; she sounded regretful, weary. “I fought her too, years ago. I thought I had beaten her, I thought I had sent her to her final Death, banished her beyond the Ninth Gate. But she returned, brought back as a Greater Dead spirit.” She frowned.

Ed was staring at her. “Brought… back? As in, brought back to life?”

Sabriel nodded, then, seeing his expression, gave him a stern look, though he thought perhaps there was something gentle behind her gaze still. “She was… terrible when she returned. Twisted far beyond all recognition, no longer human, and bound to serve the greatest force of evil this Kingdom has ever seen.” There was a note of unspoken warning in her voice.

Ed nodded, his shoulders falling. “Right” he muttered, bitterly. “Thought it would be something like that.”

“This Chlorr” said Al quickly, to fill the growing silence, “what does she have to do with…” he gestured about them, “…any of this?”

“Nothing, it seems” said Lirael, holding up the mask. “She wore a mask that looked a little like this, that’s all. But that one was bronze and Free Magic, and this is nothing more that wood and gold paint.”

 _Gold paint_. That caught in Ed’s mind. The transmutation circle back in the house of the Golden Alchemist - as he had to admit he had begun to think of it - the one they had seen in this very hall… he met Al’s glance, and knew that his brother was thinking the same thing. But it could easily be a coincidence; for now at least he could make nothing of it.

“Still” Sabriel was saying. “The fact that someone is making masks to emulate Chlorr at all is in itself… troubling. And this girl… a Southerling, you think?”

Lirael nodded. “I’m almost certain.”

“And Charter magic…” said Sabriel, almost to herself. “I wonder if she picked that up at the Perimeter.”

“She must have” said Lirael, frowning. “But to become so powerful…”

Sabriel nodded, her face sorrowful, as though lost in some memory. “She must have had a hard time of it, and to survive… well, it’s no wonder, really, that she had to learn to fight, to attack first if anyone came near…”

“What about her Charter mark? Is it untainted?”

Sabriel laid two fingers gently upon the mark on the girl’s forehead, letting them linger there a while. When she drew back, her face was even more puzzled. “There is not a hint of Free Magic in her. But there is something… she is strong, stronger than I would have believed even seeing her fight. She could be much stronger, with training.”

“That’s the last thing we want” said Lirael, frowning as she looked at the devastation around the hall.

Sabriel didn’t answer, seemingly lost in thought, her frown deepening. “She is not a creature of evil” she said quietly. “There is… fear. So much fear, and anger… but not evil.”

Lirael still did not look quite convinced, but she said nothing this time, merely watching.

“Hey!” said Ed, after a while. “Are you two going to stand there sympathising with this kid who just tried to set us on fire, or is someone going to explain what’s going on?”

“Sorry” said Lirael, her face aggrieved. She was still breathing hard, Ed noticed, fear and pain and unhappy memories warring in her face. “It’s just that…”

“We’ve never fought any enemy that uses Charter magic before, let alone a child” said Sabriel firmly. “This situation is - ”

“Wait, back up a moment. You spend all your lives fighting, and you’ve never fought anyone who uses your own way of fighting before?”

Sabriel gave him an odd look. “No. The lives of the Abhorsens are dedicated to fighting the Dead and those who would use Free Magic against the Kingdom. There are tales that rogue Charter mages have existed in the past, but they’re not something with which I have experience, I am afraid.”

“I’ve read about cases” said Lirael, nodding, “but never in recent times. None have been recorded since before the Interregnum, let alone after the Restoration. Um… that was twenty years ago. For those of us who don’t know their history.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s just great.”

“She’s just a young girl” said Lirael, pointedly ignoring Ed and coming to Sabriel’s side and folding her arms, a little defensively. She seemed to be steeling herself, pushing the tremor from her voice as if by sheer force of will, her hands clenching into fists. “It’s not as though there is anything usual about this anyway.” She hesitated, just for a moment. “I could go into Death, use the dark mirror and - ”

“No” said Sabriel sharply. “You’ve already done enough. Besides, we’ve spoken of this before. You take going into Death too lightly, Lirael. Have I not taught you that when there are easier ways, the risk attached is not worth - ”

“I know, I know” muttered Lirael, but she subsided. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, perhaps we should just wake her. Talk to her” said Al doubtfully, into the silence. “You can, um… you can do that, right?”

Sabriel nodded thoughtfully, and looked back down at the child, placing a hand on her cheek, smoothing back a shock of thick, curling red-brown hair. She belied these gentle actions though, by suddenly pulling from the air a shining rope of golden light, which she tied in a quick, firm knot about the girl’s skinny wrists, another about her ankles. Then Sabriel looked back at the others, grimly. “Be on your guard. As I think we have all seen, she is certainly more than she appears.”

“I think I got that much, yeah” said Ed, but he went silent as Sabriel laid another string of marks against the girl’s brow, whispering words close to her sleeping face, too low for anyone else to hear.

As Sabriel drew back, the girl’s whole body seemed to tremble and shake convulsively, before her eyes flickered open. For a moment her eyes darted blearily backwards and forwards, and she struggled against her bonds. But it was no use, for they did not yield.  

Sabriel, slowly and deliberately, put her bell away.

“Greetings, I am the Abhorsen. I mean you no harm. What is your name?”

The girl said nothing, but merely looked between Sabriel’s face and sword and bells with darting, mistrustful eyes, her whole body tense.

“You may test my Charter mark, if you like” said Sabriel. “Though there is Free Magic in my bells, I am no creature of it. I am charged with the defence of the - ”

“No! You’re one of them! They’ll take me away…” she struggled violently but fruitlessly against the golden Charter magic bonds about her wrists and ankles. “The bells… he had them too - ” she broke off after a moment, her eyes widened, with something like fascinated hunger. “And so did _she_.”

“He? She?” inquired Sabriel, her voice as calm as ever. “Of whom do you speak?”

“The red man. The blood man, the man from Ancelstierre. But he wasn’t from Ancelstierre, he had bells and he killed them, I know that now. Qerran and Maris and Tandah from Merran’s family in the other party, and so many more. But even then he would not let them have peace, he would not let our prayers reach the City of Light, wouldn’t let us burn the bodies. They… they rose again!” Her eyes widened. “You’re just like he is! Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

“Sabriel” said Lirael sharply. “She's… I think she’s talking about Hedge.”

Sabriel turned and nodded, a quick, grim acknowledgement, even as the girl began to struggle again, fruitlessly twisting and wincing within the glowing golden bonds. “She wouldn’t let you do this! If… if I was her, you would be hurting now, you would be dead yourselves…”

Sabriel seemed unfazed. “Hush, hush child” she said, laying her hand again against the girl’s cheek. “Be still. Tell me of this her of whom you speak.” She even smiled then, a kind, warm smile. “Please?”

“She…” began the girl, light dancing in her eyes once more. A light of fascination, mingled yet with fear, but also laced with a terrible hunger. Her eyes darted quickly to the gold-painted mask in Lirael’s hands. “She was strong. She would have broken you. She would have made you run away so far you forgot.”

Sabriel and Lirael exchanged looks again. “This she” said Ed, trying to keep track, “do you mean… um… what was her name… Ch - ”

“Don’t say her name” snarled the girl over him, her eyes darting to the mask once more. “Not you, you unworthy - ”

“Hey, who are you calling unworthy?”

“You’re weak, just like the ones she killed. One day, I’ll be strong, just like her. It’s the only way to survive, it’s the only way not to die.”

“Is… is that why you wear this?” asked Lirael, holding up the mask, clearly nonplussed. “Because you…. want to be like Chlorr?”

The girl hissed once more. “One day… one day, I’ll be as strong as her. I’ll survive until then. You’ll grow old and die, and I’ll still be here. You’ll see.”

“Oh, so you’re another one who wants immortality” said Ed, an ironic smile twisting her face. “They’re five cenz a dozen where I come from, trust me.”

She glared at him in obvious confusion, they spat at his feet, struggling again in Sabriel’s arms. Sabriel shot Ed a quelling look, before turning back to the girl in her arms, who, despite her struggling, was still bound fast within the golden embrace of Sabriel’s Charter spell.

“Very well” said Sabriel. “You want to survive. I understand. But I must tell you, Chlorr is… was… she was not human. She was a Greater Dead creature - ”

“No! She was alive, she was strong! She survived, and served no one!” The girl was gritting her teeth, struggling against the Charter spell to raise her arms, as though to cover her face.

Sabriel and Lirael exchanged looks again, but before Lirael could speak, Sabriel raised a hand and her sister fell into silence. “And yet, though you would seek to follow Chlorr’s path, you use Charter Magic? How did you come to learn it?” Sabriel let go of her sword and knelt down beside the girl, smiling. “Who taught you?”

For a moment the girl stared and stared at Sabriel, her eyes filled with shock and hatred and deep, burning anger. Then, surprising all of them, she went limp and began to cry once more, her whole body shaking as she tried to curl in on herself but was held back by her bonds, her voice rising in shrill panic and frustration. “He’s dead. I’m sure of it! They must’ve killed him, for what he did. He was kind though, and…” she gave a shuddering sob. “I… I wanted to be strong, and it’s the only way I can, it’s all I know…”

For a while, Sabriel held her as she sobbed. It made Ed a little nervous merely to watch, though he knew that however he felt, for Lirael it must surely be many times worse. Finally the girl fell silent, though she was still shaking, looking up at Sabriel in something like desperation. “I thought if I was like her, I would be free” she said, her voice small and cracked. “But I never will be, will I? You’re going to take me back, back to them…”

“Back where? Back to whom?” asked Sabriel, her voice neither tender nor stern, but merely inquiring. When the girl glared back at her in obstinate silence, glancing pointedly at the Charter magic ropes that bound her, Sabriel sighed. “This isn’t how we should be having this conversation” she said, almost to herself. Then she frowned. “If I were to take these bonds off you - ”

“Sabriel, no! We can’t trust her!”

“If I were to take these bonds off you, would that help us to talk this over like civilised people? I don’t believe we are enemies. I can help you, I think, if you would only let me.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “Why should you? You don’t know a single thing about me. You’re just one of them.”

“I can assure you, I am most certainly _not_ one of them.”

“…Prove it.”

Sabriel raised an eyebrow. Before any of the others could protest or try to stop her, she had passed a hand through the air before her, and immediately the golden ropes binding the girl’s wrists and ankles vanished, their component marks dissipating into the air. “See?” she said, raising her empty hands. “I mean you no harm, and neither do my companions, as long as you do not try to attack us again. Is that clear?”

The girl stared for a long while, entire body tensed as though for a fight, as she stared at Sabriel. After a long, long while, she relaxed a little. She nodded.

Sabriel smiled, then. “Good. Now. I have already introduced myself, but I will ask again. What is your name? Let’s start with that shall we?”

The girl was silent for a long time. “……….Rhya.”

“Thank you, Rhya.” Sabriel nodded, almost a little bow, as she helped Rhya to her feet. “Now, how about we go somewhere where we can discuss this more easily? I think, perhaps, you have a story that you ought to tell us.”


	5. Chapter 5

Rhya had not known, at first, why Sergeant Varleigh of the Perimeter Scouts had fought so hard against the faceless, nameless official who had stamped their passes. _It’s alright_ , she wanted to tell the kind young sergeant with the pale blond hair and the Charter mark on his forehead. _I know you’ll miss me and my brothers and sister, as well as all of the others of our people that you have been kind to, who have become your friends. But can you not at least be joyful for us? They promised us land across the Wall, homes, a new life. See how there are tears of joy in Mother’s eyes because her family will have enough to eat at last. See how Tandah smiles, see how Rhin and Neliya’s baby will have a better life than we do. She might even grow up free of war, if all goes as it should. Can you not feel the joy, the hope that spreads amongst the people?_

Varleigh was a friend, of a sort - even though he was an Ancelstierran - and she had _wanted_ to make him believe it.

For a little while, at least, Rhya had truly believed it herself.

She had spent so long afraid by then that she had grasped at any shred of hope that had been set before her people. However many times they were shunted from place to place, however many times they were sent to a new camp on some deserted military scrubland, however many hours they had to wait in shuffling queues in the rain for a little slip of paper they could exchange for their family’s meagre rations, or to pay off a corrupt official so that they could pass a checkpoint - however many times they were sent on, and on, further and further north of Corvere where the people of this country would not have to see or think about them - they still never stopped hoping. Every time a hand was offered to them, it could be their salvation, every chance must be followed up; they had not the luxury of caution.

 _Of course deceiving them had been the easiest thing in the world_.

An excess of hope, Rhya thought sometimes, was a weakness.

When she was not thinking such thoughts, she remembered the past. Not to reminisce for indulgence alone - no, she could not afford that, she had lost that ability years ago - but to keep the people who had died in memory, to fix them in her mind so that their blood that had gushed upon the stones would not be for nothing.

So that their downfall would not become her own.

Varleigh had been kind though, and that helped her remember that Ancelstierrans _could_ be kind - that people from any country in the world _could_ be kind, if they were brave enough - even if it was a weakness. Some chose weakness, and she would not begrudge them that choice, though Rhya vowed it would never be her choice.

_Never again._

Yet sometimes, these days, she still let herself remember his kindness. In those few golden days at the eye of the great typhoon, when they had been housed in a camp called Berryhead just south of the Perimeter, he had been the duty Sergeant assigned to supervising the transport and distribution of rations and supplies to the refugees. Rhya did not think, in retrospect, that he had strictly been allowed to speak to the refugees, beyond the necessary curt communication.

But he _had_ spoken, anyway. He had known a little of the history and geography of the South, and he had wanted to know more. He was interested in their culture, in the ways they prayed to the Gods in the City of Light, though of course he was laughably ignorant. But, unlike most Ancelstierrans, he _cared_. He was interested in the way they wove the cloth for their scarves and hats, the regional Indigos, interested in what the patterns meant and how they differed between nations and factions on the Southern continent. (Rhya had been taught from a young age to never speak to someone wearing the wrong Indigos, and she knew the danger in it, especially these days with her country of Kalarime so divided and the Temple in chaos.)

He was interested in everything, as the other Ancelstierrans who looked at them with pale, disdainful eyes never were. He had brought toys for the little ones, sometimes, simple things that the Perimeter Scouts must have made. Once he brought a carved wooden soldier for her littlest brother, a bright little coloured pennant for her cousin. He had brought boxes of cheap cigarettes for the adults, and extra rations of kerosene for the burners. Once he had brought a bag of bright, hard yellow sweets for the children to share, that had almost made her cry with joy at the mere taste, though it was very strange to her. His voice was soft, and though she didn’t understand everything he said - his voice was thick with the accent of northern Ancelstierre, and she knew too little Ancelstierran as it stood, for even the cut-glass syllables of Corvere were difficult - his words were kind.

He had also brought them the Charter, those who had cared to learn of it.

She had been the one to give her her Charter mark. She had barely known what it meant, when he had placed it on her forehead and her younger brother Thelen’s. He had done it for a whole group of children, those who had been willing. He had said, at the time, that it would help them to stay alive north of the Wall, that he was protecting them.

They had thought perhaps, at the time, it was merely a local ritual, some sigil meant for good luck and protection from evil spirits, and Gods knew she wanted that.

She had quickly learned it was so, so much more.

He had taught them the marks, too; simple, practical ones at first. Some of the younger children had drifted away after learning only the basics, but the golden glow of the Charter had entranced Rhya from the start.

And so he had taught her more marks, all the marks he knew, and how to use them. Marks to keep her warm, to make light, to sterilise water. She and Thelen had practiced them together in secret whenever they could, but Thelen was only nine, and besides he was not as good at it as Rhya herself was, she realised quickly.

She eagerly learned marks to speed the healing of wounds and sickness. She had used them, too; when her sister-in-law was giving birth to Rhya’s niece. There had been blood on the sheets, too much blood, and the midwife was grey-faced and fearful-looking, the air thick with tension. Worse, the baby was to be born the wrong way up, and with the cord wrapped around its neck. And so Rhya had cast Charter marks on to Neliya’s belly in front of all, in desperation. She had felt the child shift, and where her sister had been predicted to bleed out, the red stopped spreading across the dirty sheets, the tension in the mother’s back easing too. The baby was born quickly and easily after that, screaming out its first breaths as if in loud joy at the life it had been given back, and mother and child - a little girl - had made a swift recovery.

After that she had wanted to learn more, to learn everything she could; she could protect her family, once they had reached the lands they had been promised across the Wall. She owed it to them, after all; her mother had brought Rhya and her siblings this far from their home in the far south, had often given up food so that they could eat, had used their savings to clothe her and her brothers and sister and gain them all passage them to the safer lands of the wild north. If Rhya could give them something back, if there was any possibility of doing her part, or even more, she would do it.

 _Teach me more_ , she begged Varleigh, next time he came to the camp with the military trucks that brought the rations once a month. _Teach me everything you know, so that I can protect as many people as I can_.  

She had not understood the sadness in his pale eyes, not then. But still, he had done as she wished, and done it well. He had taught her to make a diamond of protection, to place marks of strength and endurance into her own body, or marks of accuracy and sharpness to her weapons. Not that she had any; he taught her to fight with a wooden sword, after a fashion, whilst assuring her that he hoped she would never have to use one. But she didn’t have a real sword, and privately she had thought a gun would be more useful anyway. Not that she said so, when she had no way of getting hold of either.

He said things she didn’t understand, too. Often he spoke of the lands north of the Wall - she would ask him to, bright with anticipation, craving any word of her future home, the place that would help and support her family - but there was always a note of fear in his voice when he did so. He was not a coward though, so she wondered at this, until she realised one day that the fear didn’t seem to be for himself.

 _Why are you afraid of the Old Kingdom borderlands, Sergeant Varleigh_? Rhya asked him one day, as she practiced marks of unmaking, of banishing, of destruction of spirit and substance. She knew she was learning these marks so that she could fight, but she had not quite understood exactly what he expected her to be fighting.

 _The Dead_ , he had said, and she had not understood that either.

 _The Dead are… well, dead_ , Rhya had wanted to say, but she kept quiet. She assumed that he spoke of some form of local spirit, a northern Ancelstierran superstition perhaps, like the stories they had heard from the drifters near Bain. But the Gods knew that Varleigh had always been kind and respectful towards her own people’s beliefs, even when he did not share them, so she kept quiet and practiced her Charter spells, learning them slowly and meticulously by rote.

Besides, after this he had promised to teach her blasting magic.

Long ago, when she was a child, a bomb from an Iskerian biplane had hit her school in Lerian. She had been unharmed. Her classroom had not received the worst of the blast, and she had ducked below her desk when it had happened, and when the wall to her left had crumbled it had left her in a sort of cavity or crawl space within the rubble, caught in a tiny pocket of life amid the destruction. She had been saved by the rescue teams, the military surgeons saving her little brother’s Thelen’s life too, her mother and sister embracing with relief in the hospital corridor where children were laid out on brightly coloured mats when the hospital’s beds ran out.

It was then that they had decided to leave, as so many had. Yet Rhya had always, from that moment on, wanted to break them, to hit back, to burn her way through the wreckage of war with all the fire in the heart of a child torn from her home by the faceless, grinding machinations of a war that spanned countries and never seemed to end. So when Sergeant Varleigh had promised to teach her to make the blooming explosions of Charter fire that he had shown her, her heart had quickened, excitement boiling in her blood.

True to his word, he had taught her, with nothing but a quickly extracted promise that she would take care with the dangerous power he now laid in her hands. She had been breathless then, barely listening as she dutifully promised him she would be careful. The fire, when she learned to string together the Charter marks to make it, was intoxicating, beautiful and remarkable and bright, a miracle each time.

Rhya had practiced even harder than she ever had before, and she had progressed accordingly. Her brother had never been as good as she had, and in fact he had often watched, wide-eyed, as she practiced her explosions, the golden bursts of Charter flame intense enough to scorch the grass in a perfect circle about where she stood.

 _Shh_ , she had told Thelen with a conspiratorial finger to her lips, when he asked what Mother would think. _It’s our secret, alright_?

He had nodded, wide-eyed and solemn as a nine-year-old could be at that, and begged her to show him again. In truth, Rhya was afraid that her parents would not understand, would stop Varleigh from teaching her any more, even as her power was beginning to wax. She was no longer quite so helpless, now, and she could never stop. Not now, not even if they feared for her. She would be careful. She was in control. She would survive, and save them all from any danger that threatened; they would see.

She was growing strong, now; many days of training in fighting, in Charter magic had made her focussed, quiet and strong. She was also, she half-realised at one point, almost happy in those days. For a brief moment, they had food, shelter of a sort, stasis.

And she was no longer quite so much at the mercy of the officials who had pushed them from place to place for unending months. That was the most important thing; all those men who had stared at her like she was nothing more than human waste, the ones for whom hatred had smouldered in her heart, waiting to ignite. And then the ones that had started all of this, the ones with power, who moved people like pieces across a board set for war, not caring who died and who was hurt.

In bed at night, staring up at the corrugated iron above, Rhya would let her imagination run free. The man in the cap with the reflective glasses, at the checkpoint south of Bain, the one with the badge she had come to recognise by necessity as that of the Our Country party; she imagined letting flames lick over his bald pate, burning his tongue from his mouth so that he would never speak cruel words to her mother again. The woman in who had taken them in in the Kalarimean border town of Peradin, only to try to take her littlest brother Massin - only four years old - away from their family, adopting him as the brother of her own stuck-up little pig of a daughter who pinched his arms when her mother wasn’t looking and called him cruel names. Both mother and daughter burned in the flames of Rhya’s dreams, screaming as the golden Charter fire consumed them.

And then, of course, there was the government of Iskeria, the politicians in their parliament who had decided that the bombs would start to fall on Rhya’s own country of Kalarime, all the way across the straits of Marthi. There had been water between, and yet they had still come in their biplanes; destruction raining down from the sky on Kalarime’s capital Lerian overnight. Some blamed the Temple of the City of Light and the corruption of its priesthood. But Rhya didn’t think that could be so. She herself had been there, at the very protest that was said to have been attended by Korrovian spies who sold information against the Kalarimeans to the Iskerian Autarch in his high palace over the water. She wondered, sometimes, if those spies had been paid well for that information, if they were pleased with the lives they had destroyed, the people of Kalarime they had displaced.

For the protest had been peaceful. It had been a few years ago now, but Rhya remembered standing at her older sister Kethra’s side as they had lit lanterns, writing their prayers for an end to the fighting in their neighbour countries to come to an end in tiny, neat handwriting on slips of paper. Then they had lit the papers, each placing them to the taper of a lantern which they had released into the summer air, rising up to reach the City of Light itself, perhaps.

Looking back, Rhya didn’t suppose those prayers had made it.

She didn’t know what those spies had told the Iskerian Autarch. But she supposed it must have been damning, for in the next month the bombs had begun to fall on Lerian. Rhya had heard that the Autarch justified the attack to her own people by saying that the Kalarimean Temple of the City of Light - with its highly Catechistic leanings that the Autarchy was known to hate so fiercely - was in league with the Traditionalist faction in Iskeria itself, slipping supplies across the border to the fractured Anarchist cells that still flared every so often, wherever the Autarch’s forces couldn’t get to them.

But Rhya - like everyone else in Lerian - knew that was untrue. Rhya had even heard her mother say that the Traditionalists had no ties to Kalarime at all. She wondered if even _that_ was true, sometimes; she had never doubted her mother’s words before, but in war, she had learned, no one really knows the truth of such things. Not the ordinary people at least, the ones who live in the cities that are bombed, the ones who only go the the Temple to pray for their sick brother, or their mother who is trying to find work to feed her family. To those people, the truth of the machinations of the politicians who tell the bombs to drop is as unknowable as whether the prayers really ever do reach the City of Light. Or whether the souls of those whose bodies are left bleeding and torn by the bombs would ever follow after, slipping from their broken vessels and into the arms of the Gods at last.

Rhya thought about such questions sometimes, but really she concerned herself more with the people who were behind this. The shadowy ones, the men and women in elegant silks, sitting in beautiful wood-panelled and carpeted rooms (as she imagined them) so far away. The ones who made the bombs drop, not even caring whether the information they held was false.

It was them she wanted, she thought as she flexed her hands, feeling the power, the warm glow of the Charter filling her. It made her feel _strong_ , something she had never, ever been in all her fourteen years in this world. They would burn, too, if she had her way, and screams and golden Charter fires chased their way through her dreams, sweeping the way before her clear, leaving behind a blank cleanliness on which new strength could be built the next morning.

In the day, of course, these dreams went to the back of her mind, in a dark forgotten place. She knew, because Varleigh had taught her well, that the Charter was not a force of destruction. She had learned her lessons well; the Charter, as it was, did not either inherently break, or heal, it merely _was_ ; it encoded and recorded life and the flow of the world.

But it was not meant as a force to destroy. This she knew, and the guilt it brought her was enough to stop her from telling the Sergeant what she dreamed, though not enough to stop her dreaming.

Their cabin in the camp was very small and cramped for Rhya along with her mother and her older sister Kethra, her two younger brothers Thelen and Massin, her older brother Rhin and his wife Neliya and their newborn daughter. The baby didn’t even have a name known to anyone but her mother yet, for children were not named publicly until they had reached the age of three and had their Ascension at the steps of the Temple.

Rhya wondered, sometimes, whether the girl would ever be named properly; would they build a whole new Temple of their own, when they reached the lands on the far side of the Wall? Wouldn’t the locals mind? She wondered if they worshipped the Blessed Nameless Gods in the City of Light too, or if they gave names to their gods, just like the cruel, fierce tribes of the far west that she had heard tell of. She supposed she would just have to wait and see.

Still, she thought, touching her Charter mark gently and feeling the sparkling-warm frisson of power beneath her skin, however uncivilised the Old Kingdom turned out to be, she had already been indoctrinated into its practices; there really was no going back.

And surely it could not be worse than Ancelstierre, or the wars they had left behind.

Still, even if they did build a Temple, Rhya had realised some time ago, there would likely still be disputes over matters of Catechism, for there would _always_ be those. Even amongst the Kalarimean refugees, there were a worrying mix of Dualists and Amarites. There hadn’t been any clashes yet in this party - a miracle in itself - but there would be, she knew, if times turned hard. And that was only the Kalarimeans, who were at least united in their citizenship, in their grief for the beautiful city of Lerian and the river Vehl that they had had to leave behind.

There were others too, though, from all across the continent, pressed up against one another by the narrow Northern escape route that Ancelstierre afforded. There were two families of Korrovians living a few cabins to the left, so close that Rhya was even beginning to understand their language merely from their small son wheedling his mother for more food in the early hours of every morning. There were Iznenians, and even Iskerians too, and those last she had viewed with extreme distrust at first.

That had been until she had met Tandah, though. Tandah, though assigned to another quarter of Berryhead camp, was one of the kindest people that Rhya had ever met, and had been her greatest friend here aside from Varleigh.

A tall, lanky willow-slip of a girl, Tandah had fled from a village outside of the Iskerian capital of Elenit, after the Autarch’s forces had bombed it to rubble on a tip-off that the infamous Anarchist leader Kiena Lowan was hiding there. Her father and mother and her older sister had been killed, but her younger sister Maris and brother Qerran still lived. They had escaped with their grandmother Merran, a retired journalist with contacts at the border. Tandah was a little older than Rhya, and spoke their common language - Ancelstierran - with a thick Iskerian accent that Rhya found hard to understand at times, and even harder not to react with instinctive dislike to.

Yet Rhya _didn’t_ dislike Tandah herself; that was what had surprised her most. She actually found she liked her a great deal. They had first met at the communal water pump, when Rhya had spilled her bucket all over Tandah’s boots. She had looked up to apologise, seen the distinctively ornate hexagonal weave of Iskerian Indigo cloth, folded over and pinned at one shoulder. The people of that country always pinned their Indigos with silver, but in Kalarime such a thing was never dreamt of; Kalarimean spiral-shell Indigos were always tied in a rosette at the shoulder, everyone knew that. Piercing that cloth was simply _wrong_ , and filled Rhya with deep-seated discomfort. Yes, sure enough, there was a glint of silver -  or rather cheap tin polished meticulously to as bright a silver shine as possible - overlaid with the spill of ash-golden hair, characteristic of the Iskeri. Rhya had frowned at that, snatching both her bucket and her apology away, when she had felt a tug at the trailing corner of Rhya’s own Indigo shawl.

“Please! Wait.”

Rhya turned. “Hmm?”

“You're… you’re from Kalarime, right?”

“….Yes.”

“Then why… if I may ask…” the girl, though she was perhaps a year or two older, seemed very soft and shy, Rhya thought with some irritation. _How annoying that she’s making me feel sympathy for her_. The girl had lifted her hand then, brushing fingers softly over her own forehead. “Why have you got that Ancelstierran mark, there?”

“It’s not Ancelstierran” said Rhya sharply. “It’s a Charter mark. From the Old Kingdom.”

“Oh.” The girl stared curiously at her for a moment. “I don’t know what a Charter mark is, sorry.” The Iskerian girl had her head tilted to one side. “What does it mean?”

Rhya blinked, boldness coming from her from she knew not where. Or perhaps it was mere pride, the desire to show off her new-found power. Either way it had surprised her, for she had felt neither boldness nor pride in such a long time. “It means this.” Quickly, she set down her bucket and reached into the Charter with a rather unnecessary flourish, drawing out a string of marks that together made a simple spell for light.

It really _was_ simple, one of the first spells Rhya had learned, but it seemed to make a strong impression.

“Oh!” the older girl actually stepped back a few paces, slopping water over the side of her bucket and onto her own feet this time. She reached out a hand, as though entranced, to the light in Rhya’s hand. “Ah.. may I…”

“N…” She was about to refuse, but something changed her mind, even as the words came unexpectedly to her lips. “Yes, if you like.”

But as soon as Rhya made to pass the girl the light, it went out, dissipating into its component marks as it left her hand.

The girl started, alarm in her wide, surprisingly dark purple-blue eyes. “Ah! I’m sorry, did I…”

“It’s alright” said Rhya. “I forgot that it has to be a Charter mage holding it. Otherwise, it won’t work.”

“Is that so?” said the girl.

“Mmm.”

She seemed fascinated, Rhya realised, simply staring back at her. For a while, neither of them said anything, simply watching each other warily before the silence was broken.

“I’m Tandah” the other girl said after a moment, a tentative smile breaking across her face. “What’s your name?”

“……Rhya.”

And on that - before Rhya could do anything about it, Tandah had bowed and clasped her hand in greeting, the excited fascination still plain in face.

It was a very formal, traditional sort of greeting; almost ridiculously so. And then, quite to her surprise, Rhya felt herself smile. Then she was laughing, and Tandah was laughing too, and something heavy that she had not realised had been weighing down her shoulders seemed to depart, letting her stand a little taller.

That had been the beginning; after that, they had spent days together, laughing and talking and sharing memories of home. Iskeria, it turned out, was not really so different a place from Kalarime. Sometimes Tandah’s little brother and sister were there with them, helping their grandmother Merran prepare the bland, allocated rations as best she could, or hanging up the laundry. Sometimes Tandah made her sweet, strong tea and they would swap hopes and dreams for their future in the Old Kingdom. How grand it would be, the life they would live, when they were free of this place, of camps and endless journeying and war and fear.

Tandah really was kind, Rhya soon realised, and along with Varleigh, she gave Rhya as much hope as anything did in this place.

Still, when Tandah wasn’t there, when Rhya’s went home to her own family and her little brothers had gone to sleep, the thoughts of fire, of destruction, were never far from her mind.


	6. Chapter 6

One day at the turn of the month, Varleigh did not come. Instead another man came, a soldier without the Charter mark on his forehead. He was from further south, they whispered in the camp. The whispers came with no good will. He was assigned the role of camp warden; they had never had one of those, only the guards at the gates and the men who came with the food trucks once a month. But now, apparently, the refugee camp was to have a full-time warden until further notice, whatever that meant.

His name was Brigadier General Nussman, and he had a face like stone, his eyes as cold and unyielding as those of the men in the immigration office in Corvere. The ones that had made lewd suggestions about what Rhya’s mother could do in exchange for work visas for her children, then laughed and hit her when she had spat in their faces. Nussman was, of course, neither of those men, yet Rhya immediately recognised the dead coldness behind his eyes. Yet he was in a way more frightening, because his eyes were so empty, blank and impassive.

Maybe this is what Varleigh meant, she thought, when he spoke of the Dead.

Perimeter Command, it seemed, was no longer in control of the camp, and things were changing. That was why Varleigh was gone, someone had said. She had never even had a chance to say goodbye, but, Rhya supposed, she should have expected that. She hoped, at least, that if he had been reassigned that he liked his new job, wherever he was.

She did what she had always done; she hardened her heart, and carried on.

Nussman was too senior an officer for the job he had been given, that much was clear, and from somewhere near Corvere too. She wondered what he had done to make them send him all the way out here.

 _Perhaps_ , people said, in voices tinged with despair, Rhya thought, _perhaps it means they will never send us to our lands across the Wall. Perhaps we will never leave this place, never find a home of our own._

It was an idea that was gaining prevalence by the day, creeping through the camp like an insidious disease, unrest and discord following in its wake.

Rhya wanted to hit them for that, sometimes. Her fingers itched, her whole body and mind restless in those days. She wanted to scream; _no! We will cross the Wall! You'll see. They have to give us the homes we were promised. They will let us cross soon, I know it_.

She had to believe it.

The red man, when he came, brought their papers with him. She didn't know why she thought of him as the red man, even from the beginning; it was not as if he wore red, save for the strange leather bandoleer across his chest. He wore the ordinary faded uniform of the Ancelstierran army,and she had heard he had once been a Perimeter scout; he even had the Charter mark to prove it, though now, she overheard him saying to the camp warden one day, his was mostly a desk job.

No, it was none of those things. Though his hands were clean - and Rhya found herself checking as he walked past her family's hut, just to make sure - she thought there must be blood on him. She could practically smell it in the air as he walked past, the tang of something hot and metallic, fearful, that made her the Charter mark on her forehead prickle unpleasantly.

One day, Tandah was not there anymore.

 _They’ve left to cross the Wall, to their new homes_ , people said. _Suddenly. Orders from down south_. That struck Rhya as a little odd; but then again there had been trouble and unrest of late in the largely Iskerian sector B of the camp, where Tandah lived. She supposed the army just wanted them gone.

 _Bad business_ , Rhya’s mother muttered as she stirred their soup over the little kerosene stove. _Those Iskerians, always fighting and eager to riot and stir trouble_. Rhya didn’t think she agreed with that now - though once she might have - but she kept quiet, practicing her Charter marks and listening to the whispers that spread through the camp.

Sometimes, in the dark of the night when she missed Tandah the most, she blamed him. Hedge that was, for that was his name, she soon found out. Though she had never seen him up close, he was worse that Nussman, in many ways. In her mind, the loss of her friend was tied inextricably to his sudden appearance, and though she knew it was silly - _selfish, even, for Tandah and her family surely had a better life now_ \- she resented him for it.

Before she had left, Tandah had made Rhya an Iskerian-style silver brooch from a hammered, bent and twisted aluminium fork, the cheap metal polished by Tandah herself to a mirror shine. And though Rhya never would have dreamed of pinning her Indigos with it - after all, even the mere concept of piercing the Indigo cloth was vaguely disturbing to her, and she would never dare show her face before her mother like that - Rhya often found herself holding onto it for luck.

She would always remember the day she had found out Tandah was gone, later. As she had left to go visit her friend that afternoon, she had found a guard at the gate in the chicken-wire fence around sector B.

“Let me through” said Rhya. “I want to see my friend.”

The guard looked down on her disdainfully, under the peak of his cap. “Movement between sectors has been temporarily suspended. Go home, little girl.”

 _Idiot. This isn’t my home_. “Why?” she demanded. “Why can’t we go to the other sector?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose that information at this time” said the guard, with a sneer. “Besides, it’s none of your concern, you dirty foreign scrounger.” She noticed he was wearing an Our Country badge, pinned beside the badge of the military police. “If it were up to me, we’d be packing all of your kind onto boats and sending you back to the South, bombs or no. Your war’s not the problem of us good honest Ancelstierrans, and we don’t need any more of you rats leeching off the system and dirtying the countryside with these camps they keep building.”

Rhya bit back a retort with great effort; with people like this, she had long learned, it would never achieve anything. Instead she just glared back up at him sullenly.

He lifted his mirrored sunglasses and gave her a leering smile. “Still, you’re not all a waste of ground, what? You’re a bit young for me yet, but you look like you might grow up pretty enough. Take care you do, and maybe you can find a way to stay. Hmm? What d’you say?”

She bared her teeth, having to consciously cool her fury, telling herself to stop even as the Charter marks for blasting and burning, for reducing this man to a pile of charred ash, bloomed in her mind. _No. That would only make things much, much worse_.

Still, Rhya had never been that good at keeping quiet. “Fuck you” she spat, “I hope you burn.” She lunged at him, and her hands began to spark and glow with Charter marks - _against her better judgement, against what she knew was sensible, but what could she do when the sensible thing was to keep quiet, lie back and take his taunts?_ \- but even as she did, she felt a hand clasp her wrist, in a grip like iron.

“Be at peace, child” said a calm, uninflected voice, as she struggled fruitlessly against that unwavering grip. “Did you get lost?”

She looked up at the one who had her held fast. He was a man of middle age, thin and balding, wearing nondescript Ancelstierran military green, the pips identifying him as a Major. But Rhya was familiar enough by now with Ancelstierran military dress to note that the badge that normally indicated a soldier’s unit was missing, as was any other indicator of his identity, save for a bandoleer of ammunition across his chest. But even that revealed little, particularly as he seemed to carry no weapon that she could see. In fact, there was very little in general to remark on in his appearance - in fact, some part of Rhya’s mind registered, she would have had a very difficult time describing any distinguishing feature of him to someone else - but there was something about him… something strange, making her uneasy for reasons she could not quite pinpoint.

He seemed almost hard to look at, she thought, her eyes slipping away at the edges of him. He had a Charter mark on his forehead, it was true, but even that seemed to twist and flicker as she tried to inspect it.

Her contemplation of the man was interrupted as the guard stood hastily to attention. “Major Hedge! Caught this one trying to sneak through the fence. Started giving me the lip, so I was about to deal with it, Sir.”

 _Hedge?_ Thought Rhya. But surely Hedge was the red man, who had come with their papers… she frowned. Was it really the same man? For a moment she was confused, disorientated. Besides, she had thought that Hedge was some emissary from the Old Kingdom with the way he dressed, but apparently he was an Ancelstierran after all. She had barely begun to contemplate this small mystery, when Hedge replied to the guard.

“You did well, Private. I shall take over from here.”

Despite the calm of his voice, he had not let go of her wrist. Something about him was making her more anxious by the moment, a slight, singing pain going through her Charter mark. “I want to see my friend!” She snapped, irritably. He was stronger than he looked, this unassuming Major Hedge.

His mouth quirked into a slightly condescending smile. “Ah, is that so? Well, you will surely see your friend on the other side of the Wall.”

Rhya stopped struggling. “What?”

“Did you not know? The current inhabitants of sector B are to leave Berryhead tomorrow, to begin transportation to their new homes.”

“….Transportation?”

“Indeed. The final preparations are underway for them to travel north of the Wall, accompanied by myself, to be resettled in the Old Kingdom’s borderlands. Oh, did your friend not tell you?”

Rhya shook her head, slowly, feeling a little hurt.

“Well, it makes no matter.” He gave her what might well have been described as a smile, if it had held any warmth in it whatsoever. “As I said, you will see all of your countrymen again soon. I promise you that much, little girl.”

Rhya was about to explain that far from being a countryman Tandah was from Iskeria, rather than Kalarime - on the other side of the war. But before she could, he had released her wrist - sending a final pang of inexplicable pain through her Charter mark - and swept back through the gate, his military greatcoat lifting a little behind him in the wind.

The Iskerians really were gone, it seemed - sector B was full again the very next day, with a vast group of new arrivals. Though many of these were Kalarimeans, Rhya did not feel any strong desire to talk to them, or to make any new friends. She missed Tandah, more than she had thought she would, and she often caught herself holding the brooch that her friend had made her close. When she was a small child, Rhya had worn a shell-pipe on a cord around her neck, set with all the protections of the Gods. When she had reached twelve years of age, she had knelt on the Temple’s steps and given it as tribute to the City of Light, as she knew she must, to pass into adulthood. Yet she had to admit, she had missed having something to hold for luck, something to cling to in a sea of uncertainty.

It _almost_ gave her hope.

Hedge was for gone a long time, and when he returned she found she could not warm to him any more than she had before. He spent more time around her own sector of the camp these days, and though many of the others seemed to barely notice anything wrong, she still felt a little twist of sick nervousness every time he walked past.

Yet still, she was also grateful, then, for his presence; for surely it meant that the whispers that had been circulating the families who lived near Rhya were true.

Surely it meant they were soon to cross the Wall.

The Wall: they could see it on the horizon on clear days, even though the camp was well south of the Perimeter, in a disused military airfield west of Bain. Yet even on the days when it could not be seen, the Wall was never far from their minds. It was the last barrier, the edifice that must be crossed before they would reach the lands they had been promised. Often, Rhya doubted those promises, as she knew many others did too, though it was barely spoken louder than in hushed whispers; when people spoke their doubts outright violence was like to erupt in the camp, and they had all seen far too much of that, had tried so desperately to leave it behind. And so the Wall occupied an almost sacred position; though many did not share a common language, having been united at the Asylum Seekers Office in Corvere, packed into buses haphazardly for their journey north, they all had at least one Ancelstierran word in common: the Wall.

It was beautiful, she thought, in its own sort of way, the Wall. Soon the day came when they were to cross, and Rhya felt her heart lift as they entered the Perimeter and - _finally_ \- entered its shadow, the strange shelf of cloud that sat above it blocking out the sun. But they were finally crossing; this was it. Soon they would be _home_ , the only home they had now, could ever have. The Perimeter was all barbed wire and concrete blocks, never beautiful save for those strange wooden pipes that whispered with Charter magic of a kind she had not quite seen before, strange, powerful but subtle magic she wanted to investigate but didn't have time as they were hustled past.

The Wall was something different though.

Even to the eyes of an inexperienced Charter mage like Rhya, the Wall was clearly much more than simple stone. It was a great edifice, stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions, and it seemed to fairly crawl with marks, or boil with them; the armed men of their party's escort would not let her get close enough to lay her hand against the stones even as they crossed, but if she had, she thought it might feel almost alive. Either that or her hand would sink into the stones, like she really was reaching into the Charter. She _wanted_ to touch it, and was even beginning to reach out with her hand as the gate opened and they entered the tunnel. But her mother drew her hand back, even as the man with the gun at their side instantly swung around and glared down at her.

She still wished she could have touched it though; she longed for that, suddenly, more than anything. Rhya had little experience of telling when Charter magic had been cast, as Varleigh had told her some Old Kingdom mages could do at a mere touch, but she knew enough to tell that the Wall was _old_. It took her breath away, how old it was, and she felt that if she touched it she would fall back to those times when it was raised, when there was hope and Charter magic blazed in every corner of the world, golden and warm and comforting. How wonderful, she had thought then, to go back then and see the making of such a Wall. _How had they raised it? How had they imbued the stones with this magic, a magic far beyond anything she had ever seen or would see again?_

But even as she was thinking about that, they were passing through the other end of the tunnel and out. Out into the Old Kingdom, the sky stained purple with the clouds that promised rain on the northern horizon, lit from below by the flicker of lightning. It had been sunny on the other side, but in that moment - and she would always remember it after - she felt a warm wind, lifting her hair and making her Charter mark glow and tingle in answer. Excitement had rippled through her, then; this was it, this was what they had been waiting for. Home was out there, ahead, she had thought, and from the cheering, and scattered sobs of joy, she knew the others felt the same.

The Perimeter scouts left them, after a while, and returned to the Wall, but Hedge and his men led them on. The weather was growing warmer, more humid, as they travelled north; Rhya had heard that the climate in the Old Kingdom would be different, but she had not quite known how different, not until now. They travelled in great swaying horse-drawn wagons with canvas canopies; they had left the buses behind at the Perimeter.

It didn't occur to her to ask why; not then. Her older brother Rhin’s glasses fell apart, but she ascribed it to nothing more shoddy workmanship, and they had been bought second hand from a peddler in Corvere. Then their Ancelstierran papers fell apart, but that was no major problem now; after all, it was whispered in reverential voices, they didn't need them anymore. They were never going back to Ancelstierre.

Then came the day that the wagons stopped.

It was a branching of the ways, the road splitting; westward, the ground grew marshier, but she could see hills on the horizon, which always seemed to be girdled with cloud, and the ever-present flicker of lightning. She had a feeling about that way, some kind of foreboding, but from whence it came she did not know. She thought if it came from anywhere, it came from the Charter mark on her forehead, which was odd enough. She much preferred the other way; the sky was bright in the east, as often as not. The group was split at the crossroads, and she was glad that she and her family would be travelling that way.

It was time, too, to leave Hedge behind, and for that she was even gladder. He really was living up to the first name she had given him now; he was dressed all in strange red leather and enamel armour. She supposed it was merely some traditional garb of his people - she had heard it said that he was from the Old Kingdom, or had a mixed heritage, confirming her guess - and she would have to learn about it one way or another. But still she did not like it, her eyes lingering on the sword he now wore at his side. She wondered what danger he was expecting, who he thought to fight. And always there was the scent of hot metal that followed him, a tang that was too like blood for her comfort.

And then there _she_ was.

The woman with the golden mask appeared amongst them all of a sudden one day, talking in private with Hedge for a while before coming out to survey the temporary camp at the waypoint. Rhya didn't quite know what it was about her, for she radiated as much of an air of fear and dread as Hedge did, if not more, the burning scent of hot metal clinging just as strongly to her heavy furs and thick, roughly sewn leathers. Yet she seemed different than he did; _old_ , somehow, as though her eyes behind their mask had seen much in this world.

Not that Rhya ever got to see those eyes. She was not even sure she wanted to; something in Rhya’s Charter mark reacted to the presence of the woman, but Rhya pushed it back.

There was not much she could do, in any case, as they were being sent with her, parting ways from Hedge and the families he was taking west with him, splitting the group. And though the Charter in her protested, Rhya was, in some part of herself, glad to be going with Chlorr. For that was her name, she learned. Something about her was somehow compelling. Rhya wondered, often, about her history, though she never dared to approach the woman and ask. It would be unthinkable, so she merely watched. It was a game Rhya played with herself; watch, until the pain and discomfort emanating from her Charter mark became too much, her teeth on edge and her body trembling, and then tear herself away to think of what she had seen. Chlorr, she knew, without knowing how or why, was something _different_. She was more than an ordinary human.

For several days Chlorr led them north east. For a long time, as they travelled, Rhya took every chance she could to watch Chlorr's fingers - strangely incongruous in white silk gloves - flicker across the bandoleer she wore across her chest. _What was in that leather baldric?_ she found herself wondering, wrestling with the discomfort that was uncoiling within her, balancing it against boiling curiosity, fascination growing towards obsession. It was a bit like the one Hedge wore. _Whatever it was_ , she thought, _it was powerful_. _More powerful than her, more powerful, even than the Charter itself…_

The golden-bronze mask that Chlorr wore had marks on it, but they were not Charter marks. Or rather, there _were_ Charter marks, but they were old ones, dead marks. The magic that crawled across the metal now was certainly not of the Charter; while it took the form of marks, like Charter marks and yet unlike, Rhya had the impression that it was not bound by that form. That the only reason the magic of Chlorr took the form of marks at all was to mock, to show up the trammels within which Charter magic was compelled to work.

It was unsettling, strange, and the sickening hot metal scent of it made Rhya's stomach roil, set her teeth on edge. She didn't understand it, and it made her head spin and pulse with pain, like a sickness.

But it was, undeniably, fascinating. _So much power_ , Rhya thought. _Crackling just beneath the surface_. What did Chlorr look like under those heavy furs, that mask? Sometimes, Rhya thought she caught a glimpse of red flame at the eyeholes, but she was never sure that was more than her imagination.

Still, she could never quite get that light out of her head.

They travelled for days, the heat of summer pressing in closer by the day, humid and damp and stifling. When they reached the scrubby wooded lands - not thick enough to be called a forest - Rhya felt as much relief as anyone else, though with their remaining papers clutched in their hands they were driven on by the promise of land, a permanent home in this peaceful place.

And it _was_ peaceful, Rhya thought; ever since the Ancelstierran army had left them to follow Hedge, they had seen no one else on the roads here, not even a traveller. It was true, then, Rhya thought tentatively. The Old Kingdom really was a wide and empty land, free of war and death. And it was to be their home. Farmland, they had been promised. For her part, Rhya had grown up in the city, and had no idea how to farm. But there were others who did, and they could build something together; she was eager to learn. Tandah had grown up in the country, amongst the rice-paddies of Iskeria, she though. Maybe when they met again, Tandah could show her what to do, if the climate was right.

Above all though, it was _safe_. The thought gave her hope; pale, flickering, but hope all the same.

Even Chlorr seemed more at ease after they came beneath the trees. Rhya didn't understand how the woman could go wrapped in so many furs in this summer heat, and the mask on her face must have been more uncomfortable still, metal heating up under even the weak sunlight filtering through the dense mist and clouds.

One day they passed another fork in the road, a wide, flat place where there was a tall standing stone. It was a Charter stone, Rhya had realised then. She had never seen one before, and she was as fascinated by it, as much as she was by Chlorr's magic, but where that was compelling in a too-bright, painful way, this warmed like a comforting fire on a dark night. It was safety, she thought, craning back to look at it was the column trundled on. It was the warm flow of the Charter itself, within comforting reach.

Even as they passed it, she saw her little brother Thelen’s eyes grow wide, the Charter mark on his forehead glowing softly. She wondered if her own looked like that. She didn’t need to wonder, however, whether he too felt the pull towards the stone; she could see it in his eyes, in the wonder lighting his childish face.

She smiled ruefully, closing the canvas flap and drawing him away as their wagon passed by. He gave her a reproachful look. “Aw, Rhya! I want to stop and look!”

“Hush, Thel” she mumbled, hugging him close to her chest as he squirmed. “We can’t stop.”

“But Rhya…”

“When we reach our new lands” she whispered into his hair, “then we can go back and look at it. We can look at all the stones in the whole Kingdom, if we want.”

He drew away from her, looking back in wonder. “D’you promise?”

She smiled, ruffling his hair. “Yes. I promise.”

They carried on for several miles longer after that, but the nights came quicker, here. Besides, a storm was coming, Rhya knew. She stood in the stopped wagon with the canopy down, feeling the surprisingly warm wind against her face, inhaling the smell of rain. She could see clouds on the western horizon, the flickers of white lightning within them in counterpoint to the golden dots of the camp’s cookfires and burners, flickering into life one by one around her. Chlorr was somewhere on the other side of the camp, she knew. Out of sight amid the trees.

She shuddered, as an idea bloomed in her mind, a mad, reckless idea perhaps; but one she could not shake from her mind.

 _If Chlorr was away, then perhaps this would be the perfect opportunity for a small amount of exploring_.

 _The Charter stone_ … it couldn’t be too far behind them, they hadn’t travelled for too long after the thunderstorm had been sighted on the horizon. Something about that storm had made Chlorr bring their party to a halt. Perhaps she didn’t like rain, thought Rhya, but she didn’t think much on it; her mind, now set on her plan, barely had room for anything else.

Briefly, she thought of her promise to Thelen, causing her a little twist of guilt. She would still return here with him, she promised herself. She would just take a quick look tonight, the better to show Thelen the way back later. He was only nine, after all, and the others had not the Charter mark; they would not understand, and so she herself would have to guide him.

That was enough to convince her. Rhya pulled on her jacket and boots in excitement. She had to look at it, she knew; she might not get another chance, and if she saw Varleigh again, she would tell him all about it; he had told her he had never seen one either. She imagined him writing it down carefully in his faded green notebook. She pulled her hair into a braid and wrapped her Lerian Indigo shawl around her shoulders as the last of her patience frayed, eager to be out. Then she took a deep breath - checking that the coast was clear, her mother being otherwise occupied - and slipped away from their fire.

“Rhya? Where are you going?”

Her sister-in-law’s voice, sharp with worry, made her halt guiltily, turning around before she was out of the little circle of firelight. She swallowed nervously, darting a glance to the water cart, where she thought her mother had gone, with Rhin and Kethra to held her carry their family’s buckets. “Neliya” she muttered, reluctantly, looking at her elder brother’s wife. Neliya held the squalling baby in her arms, while little Massin - only four years old - slept restlessly, half-draped across her lap, chewing on a ragdoll that Rhya had made for him herself. Rhya started as she saw Neliya’s face, her eyes hollow with worry. “What? What is it?”

“Thelen” blurted Neliya, sounding almost as though she would burst into tears. “I was… I was supposed to be watching over him, but…” she gestured helplessly, as best she could. “I turned my back, and… and… he’s gone…”

Rhya swallowed nervously. If Thelen was gone, she thought she knew exactly where. _The Charter stone_.

He must have had the same idea as Rhya had. Quickly, she made up her mind. “Don’t worry, Neliya” she said, coming to kneel beside her sister-in-law. Quickly, she wiped Neliya’s incipient tears with the corner of her Indigo, using the motion to disguise the Charter marks of sweet, dreamless slumber she laid on the baby’s brow. Instantly, the child stopped fussing and fell quiet, nestling more peacefully into Neliya’s arms.

Rhya met her sister-in-law’s gaze, suddenly suspicious, fearful even. “Rhya… what did you…”

“Hush, Neliya” said Rhya, laying two fingers over Neliya’s lips. She stood up, turning around and looking into the dark woods from whence they had come. “It was all I could do. Now, I’m going to need to ask you a favour…”

Neliya nodded, hesitantly. “….Ask, then.”

“Please, when Mother and Rhin and Kethra get back… well, I should be back before then. But if they return before I do, cover for me, will you? Make something up.”

“Wh-why? Where are you going?”`Neliya looked doubtfully at the lightning, at the dark trees beyond the camp. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Maybe.” Rhya folded her arms. “But I… I think I know where Thelen’s gone, and if it _is_ dangerous, I have to get him back.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll be back soon. I’m going to make this right.”


	7. Chapter 7

The woods were very dark, and Rhya conjured a tiny Charter light to illuminate the way just before her feet, setting it to bob gently just above her head. She knew she must have a light, for the forest floor was uneven, tangled with underbrush, and she had long strayed from the path. She could far too easily fall and break an ankle. Yet something in her wanted to remain unseen; she felt the same foreboding rising in her as she had felt when she looked at Hedge, as though something about this was not quite as it appeared. Was it her imagination, or could she even smell the same jangling, sickening hint of hot metal tang that always lingered around that man, and - she realised now - around Chlorr? For that matter, where _was_ Chlorr? Rhya was sure she hadn’t been in the camp. Then there was that storm to the west, and it was coming closer. Rhya could even see flashes of lightning through the leafy canopy, hear the rush of wind in the high branches, though there was no rain to cool the humid, oppressive air.

The brooch that Tandah had given her was still in her jacket pocket, where she always kept it, and the touch of it alone was enough to bring her a little more courage.

At least she didn’t need to worry too much about actually _finding_ the Charter stone, she soon realised. She found she could sense its presence, sort of feeling for it through her own mark, like a warm golden glow just at the corner of her consciousness. When she closed her eyes, it was even easier. It was close now, she knew. _Just beyond the next_ -

Lightning flashed, much, much closer than before, and her eyes sprang open.

For a moment, Rhya felt as though frozen to the spot, transfixed by a nameless, formless horror.

 _Something was very, very wrong_.

She began to run.

At least she had been correct in the location of the stone, she thought; it was right where she had sensed it, just in the next forest clearing.

At first when she came to the place where the trees thinned, she frowned for a moment, puzzled; the place was crowded with her own people, at a glance, a great crowd of them with their backs to her, standing in rough concentric rings around the stone she could see over the tops of their heads. They seemed to all be watching something, though it was impossible to see what. But whatever it was, Rhya thought with a chill as she neared the edge of the wood, it was nothing good. Even as she approached she felt a crawling sensation of nameless dread twist up her spine, a bitter taste of bile burning at the back of her throat. There was fog in the air, she noticed, lit oddly from the inside by the still-defiant golden glow of the Charter stone, which was nevertheless made indistinct and near drowned by the pale tendrils, through which blinding white sparks occasionally flickered. The mist made it impossible to see what was in the clearing - beside the stone, presumably - that was making the people so distressed. And they looked to Rhya, too, as though they were in some great pain; she could see men and women, children too, tearing at their hair and their Indigos, and even in some cases at their very _skin_ , she noticed in alarm. Whatever it was must surely be terrible. Then there was the smell. She wrinkled her nose, trying not to inhale, but the stench was heavy and permeated everything, even to where she stood cowering behind a tree outside the clearing. It was thick and choking, blood and sickness and decaying meat, putrid and heavy in the humid summer air. But above it all there was a scent of burning, combined with that other smell again; the strange, sickening tang of hot metal, that had followed them as just a hint all along their journey.

Rhya gritted her teeth, clutching at the brooch that Tandah had given her until the polished aluminium cut at her fingers, summoning her courage once more. Whatever was going on here, it was wrong; she knew that much deep in her bones. And Thelen could be trapped right in the middle of it. The people’s backs before her loomed up as dark shapes cut from the dim miasma lit from the inside by Charter marks and those strange crackling sparks, a never-ending dance of light that seemed to twist and turn on itself. No, not a dance, she realised; for some reason, it seemed more like the lights were at war, fighting against one another.

 _And the people_ … she could hardly see their faces, and that made her afraid. The flickering light warped their bodies into swaying, twisting shadows. They seemed so tall - strangely distorted - that she almost shrank back into the trees. But instead, she gathered her courage, and tugged at the trailing hem of the nearest woman’s Kalarimean Indigo shawl, meaning to ask her what was going on. Maybe it was even someone she knew, Rhya thought; a friend of the family, perhaps, who might lift her on strong shoulders so she could see.

Her words died in her throat as the woman turned back to her.

She could not even scream; she simply stood there, silent and wide-eyed as the moment stretched out.

The eyes that met her gaze - if they ever had been those of a friend - now held not a trace of familiarity. Not even a trace of anything _human_ ; they were black, burning pits, sunken deep in a grey-pale face, blotched the purple of a corpse that has lain face down, letting the blood pool. The nose was half sheared off completely, skin hanging in tatters and strips of slimy white, as though raked by nails, with fierce and terrible strength.

 _Dead_.

This wasn’t a person, Rhya realised; this was a Dead creature, even as Varleigh had warned her, all those long weeks ago. She hadn’t understood then, when he said that the Dead could be brought back in the Old Kingdom; she had thought he was speaking metaphorically, or referring to some ancient system of ancestor worship like the strange beliefs of the far west that Rhya had read about in books, a mere folktale, _or… or_ …

She had no time to finish the thought. The creature screamed, a terrible, inhuman howl, making all the others in its immediate vicinity in the tightly packed crowd turn too. It was reaching out its hand, this woman - this thing that had _once_ been a woman, one of Rhya’s own people - and fingers with flesh stripped back to reveal shiny white bone reached out for her face.

Rhya didn’t think then, her mind going, for half an instant, quite blank.

Then, without her consciously having decided to do so, she was screaming and pulling marks from the Charter, marks for blasting and fire, blinding and destruction. _Burn it. Burn them all_. Instead of the usual measured care with which she cast Charter magic - for Varleigh had been careful to impress upon his pupils the dangers of using magic rashly, particularly the more powerful marks - she found herself almost wrenching the marks from the never-ending stream of the Charter, desperation making her nearly fumble them, almost making the spell fall apart.

If that had happened, she knew she would have died. But at the last moment, the marks came together again, blooming into a cloud of fire that sent the creature reeling and shrieking, toppling back into several of its fellows. It was already getting up, writhing in the golden Charter flames as though in agony, when the others began to close in on her, but she wasted no time, edging back into the woods and casting another, more powerful ball of fire. The Charter flames were igniting the underbrush, and the Dead were turning from whatever they had been so focussed on in the centre of the clearing to look, to claw their way towards her.

The golden fire seemed to repel them though, at least a little. She cast mark after mark, singing them into life, with more effort each time. Another clawed hand reached for her, quicker than should have been possible for a human hand to close - grabbing at her hair, another at her wrist. She screamed in terror, laying her hands on their cold, clammy flesh and casting the strongest marks of destruction she knew. It worked; the hands were blown clean off their owners’ wrists. Or not _quite_ clean off; one of the Dead creatures’ hands was only partially burned off, the Charter marks apparently having not eaten all the way through the corpse flesh. The hand hung obscenely by a stringy grey tendon, twitching on the end of a Charter-blasted stump of a wrist.

Yet the creature, though it gibbered and screamed in pain, did not seem to be halted by this; still it reached towards her, as though its hand was still in place. The other, too, whose hand she had blasted off to the elbow, was also now advancing on her again, as was another, from behind and to the side.

There were too many of them, she thought in a panic. They were closing in, too, drawing her into the crowd and if she was trapped there she would be torn apart, or bitten to death by those gleaming skulls’ teeth. _Or perhaps she would become one of them_.

She could not let that happen. There was still space behind her, the forest still at her back, she could run, she knew.

She nearly did, too.

But then she remembered Thelen, the stone, the reason she’d come. If he was there, she thought in horror, he would be right at the centre of whatever horror was going on there. The thought sent cold fear rippling through her anew, pain and rage and uncertain doubt twisting within her. She knew one thing though; she had to get him back.

She took a deep breath, blowing out a stream of Charter marks at a corpse-hand and trying to calm her nerves, and then reached into the Charter once more. But this time it was not to draw out marks of fire. It was a different spell she sought, one she barely remembered the marks for; she had never needed to use it. It was a spell of defence, shining golden-bright armour made of woven Charter marks.

Before, she had cared little for such things; when Varleigh had taught her the marks, she had dutifully memorised them, as she had everything else. But she had been more interested in practicing the blasting spells, the ones of fire and destruction that she had imagined that she would use to bring devastation on her enemies, the ones who started this war, and all who had scorned her family and her people. Now she struggled to remember the marks she needed, almost dropping them from her mind once more. But even as they slipped, she grasped them back again, letting the spell enwrap her like a comforting blanket, which should nevertheless keep her safe from harm. She just hoped that creatures like these were the sort of harm the spell protected against.

Thankfully it seemed they were; even as Rhya let the spell cover her, the Dead things started recoiling back from her touch. She smiled wryly when she saw that; the way they had parted, here at the back of the crowd, it almost looked like a path leading forward into the crushing ranks ahead and to the centre of the clear circle in the middle of the clearing.

Her path was set, then.

Before she could change her mind, she was pushing fiercely through the gap in the crowd of Dead, shoving them aside with all the additional strength that her suite of spell-armour afforded her, making full use of its protection. The creatures recoiled from it, though not as much as she had hoped; she had to cast several more blasting spells before she finally shoved her way through to the front of the crowd.

If Rhya had not thought that she could feel any more horror than that of what she had already seen, she knew in that moment she had been very, very wrong.

As she peered out from between two Dead creatures - screaming and flailing at the touch of Rhya’s armour - a little gust of wind made that strange fog swirl in sudden eddies, parting it just enough to let her see.

 _So this_ , she thought, _was what Chlorr had left to do tonight_.

The woman - if she even still _was_ a woman, Rhya thought, for suddenly it became clear to her just how inhuman Chlorr looked; why had Rhya been credulous enough to fall for such a fragile human guise? - was standing at the foot of the low stone plinth on which the tall, upright Charter stone stood. Her bronze mask glinted golden in the light, empty eyes black yet somehow writhing and twisting with dark red flame, her outline flickering with white sparks, as though in response to the proximity of the Charter stone. White smoke trickled from the mouth-hole of her mask. There was a dagger in one of her white-gloved hands, a wickedly sharp thing of dark steel, crawling with strange, sickening marks that made Rhya’s head spin, dripping with black and red flames that fell upwards instead of down as Chlorr held it poised in midair.

But it was what was held in Chlorr’s other hand that made Rhya stop in her tracks, breath catching in her throat, suddenly frozen like an animal caught in a trap.

A little boy with dark hair and a tattered Indigo cloak, kicking and flailing ineffectually in the air. He had his mouth open as though to scream, but no sound came out, as though he had already used up all his voice, and there was none left.

There was a Charter mark on his forehead, burning brightly as if in protest. But Rhya didn’t even need to see it to know who it was.

 _Thelen_. Her little brother Thelen, who had wanted nothing more than to see a Charter stone up close.

Chlorr had him by the front of his bunched-up Indigo cloak, holding him with his back up against the Charter stone, his feet barely brushing the ground as he struggled and fought weakly.

She tried to push her way through the final line of Dead - _her people, all her people, turned to monsters_ \- sending them screaming and gobbling, scattering on either side. Hands grabbed at her, but she drew two daggers made of bright Charter marks from the barely-remembered depths of her knowledge, scorching her palms as the marks came too quickly, fuelled by desperation. But they were effective enough; she slashed out viciously at the Dead, the Charter magic meeting their pallid, slimy flesh with explosions of white sparks.

All the time she looked resolutely away from their faces.

She was there; she was at the front of the crowd at last, and Chlorr had no seen her; she seemed absorbed in her work, raising the dagger and singing out some incantation that made Rhya’s flesh crawl, making bile rise up in her throat. Thelen’s face was pale with terror, his eyes huge, but now she saw him close them, turning his face away. _Preparing to die?_ Perhaps he did not want to look into the depths of the mask’s eyes as he took his final breath in this world.

 _No. It would not be his final breath. Not if Rhya was still alive, and fighting_. With a furious scream, Rhya ran forward, a spell already building in her mind, the strongest marks of fire and destruction, of undoing and final death that she knew, meant for Chlorr.

It all happened too quickly.

 _Perhaps_ , she would think later, _perhaps and perhaps and perhaps_.

Perhaps in one of the stories she had read as a child - Thelen and little Massin curled up safe in her lap, dropping off to sleep - then she might have been in time to save him. She might have done any number of heroic things; she could have distracted Chlorr with a spell, or knocked the knife from her hand, or even thrown herself in its path at the very last, letting her own blood spill across the stone.

But it was _not_ Rhya’s blood that spilled. She reached out, throwing herself at Chlorr, but even as she did so a hand was grasping at her, the clawing hand of a Dead thing, catching her by the hair and making her lose her balance, falling hard on her hands and knees. As she knelt on the ground, instants stretched out as it bore down on her, but her blood was pulsing hot in her temples now, her body burning with adrenaline. She threw the spell that was building in her hands blindly back at it, causing the creature to let go with a blood-curdling shriek, falling back.

Rhya did not stop to look, though; instead, she was scrambling to her feet once more, raising her head, dreading what she would see. _Oh, Gods, you up there in the City of Light, let it not be too late, he’s just a child, save him, please, please, I’ll do anything, just save him_ …

She turned her head and looked.

 _Blood_. Blood was the first thing she saw, blood splashing onto the stone from where Chlorr’s dagger parted the soft flesh of her little brother’s throat. Chlorr - who seemed to have noticed nothing of the disturbance behind her, or else simply did not care - had reached the peak of her chanting, nearly screaming out a sinister song now as white smoke poured from her mouth and Thelen’s blood fell on the stone, spurting in weakening beats from the main artery. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open as he choked and spluttered blood, and in that moment, his eyes widened, his mouth making the shape of one last word before he died.

“ _R-Rhya_ …?”

Her eyes widened, as his went blank and lifeless, his Charter mark glimmering once more and going out.

For a moment, she was too shocked to move, all thoughts of charging at Chlorr, stabbing her in the back with a spell-dagger or burning her to the ground immediately departing, along with the marks she had prepared, slipping from her fingers and her stunned mind.

But even as Rhya stood there aghast, Chlorr threw back her head and laughed, a terrible sound like the screams of a thousand carrion crows mixed with the grating of rusted metal, the smoke a gushing torrent that eddied about her, wreathing her body. But almost immediately there was a blinding burst of white sparks and the laugh was drowned by a greater sound; a great and terrible crack, as though the earth itself was being rent in two. Immediately, Rhya felt a sharp, singing pain in her forehead where her Charter mark was, a convulsive shuddering going through her body, combined with a wave of nausea, the smell of hot metal stronger than ever, making her head spin with dizziness. She fell to her weakened knees and retched, her face suddenly coated with cold sweat, the pain in her forehead and in her chest nearly unbearable.

Then, all at once, it was over.

She raised her head, tentatively, and let out a gasp.

The soft golden light of the Charter stone had gone out; the clearing was now lit by only the flicker of flames that burned in small patches in the grass all around. There was a great crack running down the centre of the stone, as though it had been struck by a bolt of lightning from the storm that was now swirling right above. The marks in it were dead now, simply scratches in the stone.

The Dead were standing around in hushed awe; they had at least stopped trying to grasp at Rhya, but that, she knew, was no good sign. Chlorr let Thelen’s body fall like a broken puppet at the base of the broken Charter stone and held out one white-gloved hand before her, stained red, fingers clenched as though to draw the Dead further into her thrall. With the other, she held the bloody dagger high above her head like a trophy, lifting her mask a little to lick the blade with relish. Through the smoke, Rhya glimpsed nothing but swirling darkness beneath the mask, lit strangely from within by the flicker of red flames where eyes should be, before it was replaced, red-gold in the flickering firelight. The dance of the flames made the mask almost seem to change its features, flickering into many shapes of horror.

That, she knew instinctively, was the moment Chlorr had seen her. Her gaze hit Rhya like some physical thing, her presence and the hot metal smell so strong they were almost unbearable. Rhya felt sick, and she would have retched again if she had anything left in her stomach. She couldn’t move, either, her limbs suddenly fixed in place by the force of Chlorr’s masked gaze.

“Behold, my slaves” began Chlorr, addressing the Dead, “it seems luck has been granted to us tonight.” Rhya couldn’t see a face - nor did she want to - but she could hear the mocking laughter in Chlorr’s voice, a voice like grating iron. “We have not one but _two_ Charter rats in our possession, the bearers of blood for the breaking. How very fortunate indeed.”

 _Blood for the breaking_? Rhya looked up at the Charter stone, with its great crack, its dead marks. Varleigh had mentioned Charter stones in passing, but he had never said that they could be _broken_. Perhaps he had not known himself; she didn’t know what this dark sorcery was, but surely it could not be Charter magic. Likewise, whatever held together the broken sinews and clicking bones of the Dead now - _her people, still wearing the Indigos of their homeland_ \- was the furthest thing possible from the Charter’s comforting golden glow.

And, she supposed, Chlorr too; for Chlorr, she realised now, was just as Dead as they were. Rhya wondered how she had not known it before, had not seen it from the very start. If Chlorr had once been human, there was surely not a shred of humanity left beneath those heavy, stinking furs, that blank-eyed mask.

She began to get to her feet in defiance, realising that she was surrounded. Even as she did so, she began to summon marks from the Charter. Marks for burning, for immolation so total that not a trace would remain, as she glanced around at the Dead. There were faces that she knew there, she realised, though no one who had been close. They were a group of Kalarimeans she had known only by sight, who had been travelling right at the head of the column of wagons. _Everyone had envied them their position as they would surely have first pick of the choice tracts of farmland they had been promised_ … she shuddered, clutching Tandah’s brooch in her pocket so hard that she could feel her flesh bruise anew.

_Tandah, is this what happened to you too? Was Hedge leading you to the same fate?_

She herself would not end up like that, Rhya decided in that moment. She would survive, or she would be so utterly destroyed there was nothing left to become a Dead slave, a decaying puppet of those who saw her people only as disposable tools, lied to and lied to and lied to again at every turn.

The marks she drew from the Charter felt hot in her hand, and she reached deeper, desperately trying to remember the most powerful marks she had read of in Varleigh’s books. They could burn through the caster if used recklessly, could destroy those who tried to use them without rigorous preparation, could tear her apart.

And that was just what she needed.

She sucked in a deep breath, staring between Thelen’s body - a mere slumped shape of darkness at the foot of the broken stone - and Chlorr’s burning eyes behind the mask. Perhaps, she thought desperately, anger rising in her, she could even take this creature down into fiery oblivion with her. She would certainly try her utmost to do so.

“No” said Chlorr calmly. The single word went through Rhya like a blade’s thrust to the stomach, pinning her in place with cruel and terrible power, making her struggle to keep the marks in her mind for a moment before letting them drop completely, unable to touch the Charter. “No. You must live, little Charter mage.” A gloved corpse-hand brushed the Charter mark on her forehead, making her convulse once again, and she would have fallen if it were not for the power that seemed to hold her in a grip of steel. “Like that other little one, you must do your duty.” Chlorr laughed, horribly. “You must serve, as we all must, in our ways, but you will have a special honour, before you become a mere slave like the other weak ones of your people. You will help in the destruction of the Charter you have embraced, so that my other slaves - ” she gestured at the Dead “ - and those yet to be born can move around with ease. Helping to bring about the ultimate Freedom.” Chlorr tilted Rhya’s head back by the hair, as though inspecting her throat. She nodded, seemingly satisfied. “But not yet. You will be needed when we reach the next troublesome stone, so you must live your pitiful life a little longer before I am done with you.”

Chlorr’s hand was above her face now, and Rhya could hardly breath, her heart fluttering in panic. But even as her mind raced through all the possible ways she could get out of this - few enough, and each more impossible than the last - Chlorr’s head snapped to one side suddenly, as though her attention had been caught by something, far to the north, or perhaps the east. The sun was beginning to rise, Rhya knew, but that was not all; there was a smell on the air, the smell of Charter magic, though far off and faint.

Chlorr spat. “Something comes” she muttered, staring down at Rhya. Fury flashed in her eyes and white smoke poured from the mouth of her mask. “Well, we shall not reach the next stone today. But fear not…” she laughed again. “If there is to be a battle you will be quite safe. But don’t think of trying to get away. I will bind you tight.”

Even as she spoke, her hands were moving, sketching in the air a strange web of shadow, lines of inky black in the air that settled around Rhya, staying on her for a moment, before sinking into her flesh. She screamed as they touched her, for contrary to their vaporous appearance, they bit into her flesh like ice-cold metal, tightening until she could hardly breath, let alone move.

Then, suddenly, it was over. All at once, Chlorr’s hold on her was ended, and she dropped, limp and boneless, to the grass, the blackness encroaching on her even as she tried to raise her head, taking desperate, gulping breaths. But there was no strength left in her limbs, and all she could do was flail weakly as the Dead began to shuffle and shriek all around her.

With the last of Rhya’s awareness, she saw Chlorr raise her head, drawing a longsword that, like the dagger, dripped with dark flames. “To me, my servants” she called, in a great voice. “Let us drink the blood of your fellows, and bind them to serve. Then you will taste the blood of the Abhorsen filth that comes to send you back to Death, in her presumption.”

With that, she made a great leap over the heads of the Dead, bounding from the clearing in steps longer than any human legs could achieve. The Dead ran in a great crowd after her, howling and beating their hands together in relentless bloodlust. But oddly, none of them trampled over Rhya where she lay curled on the ground in the centre of the clearing; it was as though an invisible wall surrounded her, with the Dead simply going around.

When they had all left, the last thing she remembered was a far-off scream, but before she could even think about some new danger this might herald, she was falling fully into blackness, heavy oblivion closing over her head.


	8. Chapter 8

When she came to, it was the grey light before dawn, and for a moment, Rhya did not know where she was. She had been at the camp, she remembered, but why was she now out here in the forest? And why did her head hurt so badly? She tried to think. _She had been looking for Thelen, he had gone to look for the Charter stone and she had gone after him_ …

 _Thelen_.

Suddenly, it was all coming back at once, all of the horrors of the night. She whipped around - making the pain in her head pulse unpleasantly - hoping with all her heart that she wouldn’t see what she knew must be there, just behind her.

The stone, broken down the middle.

The small body, lying crumpled in a pool of dried blood.

His eyes were open, and she closed them, her heart sick and weary. Thelen was _dead_. He was dead, and it was because of her, because she hadn’t been able to save him. _He had only wanted to learn Charter magic because Rhya had, they had talked about how they would protect their people together, when they reached their new homes_ …

Her breath caught in her throat, hitching in a choking sob. Hot tears were streaming down her face, she realised, only noticing now as she couldn’t see for them. She knelt on the ground beside his body, her fingers clasping in the soft forest loam, desperate and clawing, driving into the cold, damp earth beneath.

After a long while, she rose to her feet. She should give him the final rites, she knew, but for a long while she simply stood there, staring blankly into the trees.

When Varleigh had taught her the spell, he had said that its main use was to prevent a body being _used_ after death, and she hadn’t known what he meant at all; now she did though. She sighed, leaning down and cupping Thelen’s cold, pallid face in her hands. Varleigh had also said that the spell helped the spirit along its way, and that she always had understood. She and Thelen had spoken of it, in fact, and they had agreed that it meant that the spirit would be able to pass to the City of Light. _That must be what it meant, for what else could there be?_

Now, though, she was not so sure. Could spirits really pass to the City of Light? For that matter, would one want to? For herself, Rhya now wondered if she would want to spend an eternity with Gods that would let the events of last night play out their bloody course, all the while standing by and doing nothing.

Still, she realised, this was not her choice. Thelen would have wanted her to do this, and besides, surely what awaited him above was better than his fate would be if left in this world of walking corpses and unnatural magic.

She held his hand for a long while more before she had the courage to get up, lay his body out, and place a last kiss on his brow, and assume the spell-casting stance she had been taught with deliberate care. She delayed, she supposed, because she did not want to see his body burn, to see flames catch in his hair and his clothes, consuming his body which would never grow up. Did not want to be the one responsible.

Yet still, she _was_ responsible; that much she knew.

With that thought came another, worse one. _Mother. Mother and Kethra and Massin, Rhin and Neliya and their baby, Rhya’s little niece who wasn’t even old enough to have a name_. They were all back at the camp. And Rhya would have to tell them why Thelen was dead, how he had died because he was a Charter mage, _how Rhya could have died in his place_ … she would have to show them his body, she decided. If there was nothing left but ash, it would only make it worse.

And so it was holding her brother’s body in her arms that Rhya made to leave the forest clearing, beginning to trudge back through the trees. But even as she started to do so, something strange happened. A pain in her chest, starting small, but turning sharper, the farther she tried to go from the clearing, until she could not physically walk without falling to her knees, panting and breaking into a sweat, gritting her teeth to keep from screaming. But when she dragged herself back to her feet, turning and walking back to where she had started, the pain receded again, as though it was never there.

It was, she thought, like a fishhook in her chest, tugging and tearing when the further away from that place she tried to go. Rhya tried several more times before she understood, Chlorr’s words from the night before ringing in her ears once more. _If there is to be a battle you will be quite safe. But don’t think of trying to get away. I will bind you tight_.

A chill went through her. _Bound?_ It made sense though, she knew with sinking heart. If Chlorr wanted to use her blood in the same way as she had Thelen’s - for apparently that was why she had needed him, as a mere sacrifice - then Rhya had to be kept alive, unlike Chlorr’s other servants. But that meant she had to be kept out of danger, and in one place.

Rhya frowned. Had there really been a battle? With whom? She supposed Chlorr must have enemies on which she had unleashed her Dead servants, but Rhya couldn’t begin to guess at who they might be.

Still, it barely mattered, she realised. She was trapped, and could not move. She had to admit it was clever. _Like a spider, keeping a fly wrapped up tight to eat later_. In fact, she found herself thinking, there was indeed much to admire about Chlorr. She had felt so old… _old and powerful, so much power that the world would surely break and tremble at her feet_. A moment later, Rhya frowned. Where had that thought come from? Surely that had not been her own. But her mind still felt fuzzy and unfocussed after her waking; she found if she tried to grasp any single thought, it merely slipped away, not even fully formed.

She gritted her teeth, putting her hand to the side of her head. Pain was one thing, but this was another. What had Chlorr done to her? Rhya got to her feet once more, her muscles protesting as she tried to lift Thelen’s body. She must get away from here, she knew. Must get away, before Chlorr came back for her. Something twitched in her mind. _What chance do you think you have, little girl? She will come for you in the end. You cannot hide_.

“No” said Rhya, out loud, her voice grating in her throat. There were tears in her eyes, and she squeezed them shut against it. “No! I’m going!”

With a yell, she took a running leap towards the edge of the clearing, but once again, she found herself falling to her knees at the very edge, under the eaves of the trees. She dropped Thelen’s body in the process, and he fell into a soft bed of dry leaves, sending up a little flurry of them that fell across his face. Rhya brushed them away, tears starting anew in her eyes. “Sorry” she whispered hollowly, lifting his body again. She wondered if his spirit could hear her. She doubted it. But still, it made her feel better to say the word, inadequate as it was. Sorry was not enough; it would never, ever be enough for all the grief that was welling inside her, threatening to spill.

But no, she could not let it. Not yet, anyway. At the very least, she would have to get Thelen’s body back to their mother first. Her heart contracted at the thought of what she’d say when she walked into the camp holding his limp form in her arms. Mother would grieve, even as she had when she had been pregnant with Massin and their father had been killed in a bomb attack on a peaceful protest on the streets of Lerian. Kethra would be angry, before pulling Rhya into her arms and holding her tight, sobbing hot tears into her hair. Rhin would hold Neliya and their baby and weep silent tears. And Massin… little Massin who was only four years old, and had now already lost a brother. She simply didn’t know what she would say to him at all, but she must say _something_ ; she owed him that much, at least. She could give them only an explanation, weak words that would never fill the holes in their hearts, the empty place in the family.

 _Her family_.

The thought hit her with force; the clawing hands of the Dead, their hunger for Rhya’s life, their bodies that kept fighting, even while blasted almost apart with Charter magic. If Chlorr had them attack the camp, there would be no way for them to defend themselves against those grasping fingers, flesh already beginning to be stripped from the bone, those teeth that would tear flesh. If they had not even the Charter to help them, then her family would be effectively defenceless.

Besides, the Dead had been their own people. Chlorr had taken them, and killed them, and made them her slaves.

 _What if that was what Chlorr had been planning all along? Hedge too, even._ Her mind spun with the scale of how awful that thought was. _No, surely it couldn’t be… there must be some mistake, there must be_ someone _in this world who cared for her people, who truly wanted them to be free._

 _There_ must _be… mustn’t there?_

Either way, she knew, she had to get back to the camp, and quickly. She clenched her jaw. It would hurt a lot to push through the binding spell Chlorr had used, she thought, but she doubted it was impossible. She would be in a great deal of pain, but she did not think that she would die.

Besides, if she did die, perhaps it would be a better death than what awaited her otherwise.

 _And perhaps she would deserve it_.

She got to her feet, lifting Thelen’s body once more in her arms.

She took a deep breath.

She ran.

Immediately, the pain came again, but even as she felt her body begin to falter this time, her legs to give way and her lungs to scream in pain, she pushed on, grasping a tree for support. She screamed, letting her mind fill with thoughts of her family, confronted by those monsters, and Rhya the only one who had anything like the power to save them. She had to get there in time, she simply _had_ to, there was no other option. Even if she came with her heart torn to pieces by the pain that was ripping through her, even then, as long as she could cast Charter magic, it would be enough. _That was all that there was left for her now, she had to keep them safe, she would burn their enemies, she would crush them to pieces_ …

She reached for the Charter as the pain pulled her to her knees once more. It was hard to reach in her panic, but after a moment she brushed it, just lightly, and that granted her a reprieve of sorts, for just a moment. But instead of using it to rest, she only pushed harder, letting the Charter marks flow into her, making her stronger. _The stronger to break, the stronger to burn_. _The stronger to fight_. On and on she fought, and it seemed like an age had passed, though really she had no idea. She had come to sense the bonds that held her now, and she threw herself at them again and again and again, like an invisible prison wall around her. Each time it hurt a little more, but she did not stop.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The binding broke, all at once, spilling Rhya to her knees on the forest floor in a little spray of leaves, cradling Thelen’s body in her arms as her legs half gave way. A moment later, she was springing back up once more, staring suspiciously around, as though for enemies.

 _Who is the real enemy, little girl? Is it not the weak, imprisoning Charter? You are a creature like her, or you could be. Go back. Go back to her, for she will find you anyway_.

She shook her head, disturbed. But there was nothing there, only the whisper of the wind in the trees as the sun began to rise, turning the night’s chill back to the cloying humidity of the day before.

After gathering her strength for a moment, leaning against a tree and touching the brooch in her pocket for a little courage, Rhya lifted Thelen’s body and began the slow, weary march back to the camp. It was slow going, not least because she was unsure of exactly where she was; in her fear last night, she must have run further in the dark forest than she had thought. Not that it was easy to tell, as the cloudy sky was a solid, milky white, with no sun visible through the canopy to keep her moving in the right direction, so for all she knew she could have gotten turned around several times.

It was midday by the time she got near the place where the camp was; she recognised a tree she had passed the night before, a great beech with three trunks, ancient and ageless. From there, she knew it was not far to the edge of the forest, so she began to walk faster, given new heart. She was nearly at the eave of the forest, she would be able to see the camp in just a moment…

She stopped short, frozen once more in her tracks, though this time by no binding spell.

“ _No_ …”

The word slipped from her mouth without her conscious thought, her mind struggling to understand what she saw.

The camp was empty. Several thousand people, simply _gone_ , over the course of one night. She stared and stared, taking in the trickles of smoke rising into the air, from braziers and burners that were still lit. She took a few tentative steps out from beneath the trees. It must have happened very quickly; here was a doll made of twisted rags, dropped by a child, there was a standard issue water canteen, tipped onto its side. Here a pile of papers drifting in the wind, and there a harness from one of the big, slow carthorses they had used after they had crossed the Wall. Rhya frowned. Even the animals were all gone. She approached a family’s wagon, peering at the canvas side; it looked as though it had been slashed, back and forth, with vicious force. What was that dark stain? Was it blood? She didn’t want to look inside. Besides, she was still carrying Thelen’s body, so she carried on walking, small fires burning at her feet from a brazier that had been tipped over, charcoal black and ash grey against the green grass of what had been a bright meadow, before they had made their camp here.

She walked, unconsciously returning the way she had come, her feet taking her to the place she both wanted and dreaded to go.

Her own family’s wagon was where it had been left, and it looked much the same as the last time she had seen it - at least superficially - save for the fact that it was apparently completely empty. Gently, she laid Thelen’s body down outside to take a closer look. Her hand parted the canvas - that too had been slashed and torn, a whole section of it hanging loose - and looking.

She caught her breath, tears coming to her eyes. Inside, it was as though there had been a bomb blast, like the one at her school in Lerian; they didn’t own much, but everything they did have was broken, or damaged, or upset, or crushed. Once again, there were those stains on the walls, like something dark red had sprayed there. She had not wanted to believe it was blood, but what else could it be? She breathed very hard, trying not to wonder whose blood that was. _Was it the blood of the ones who had done this? Or was it Mother’s, or Kethra’s, or Massin’s? Was it Rhin’s or Neliya’s, or even their baby’s_?

Her foot bumped up against something on the floor, and she looked down, peering down between the piled blankets, which also seemed to be torn and stained with blood. _What was that? Pale against the wooden planks of the wagon’s bed, there was something bright shining there too_ …She leaned over to get a closer look.

Rhya straightened up then, her head spinning, reeling back in horror.

A finger. It was a severed finger, lying on the floor - knuckles gently curled - a ring still shining bright upon it. A ring that their mother never would hear of selling, even when times were at their worst. A ring Rhya recognised, for she remembered her brother Rhin, and his almost manic enthusiasm for choosing it - they had all teased him a little for that - three years earlier.

Neliya’s wedding ring.

Rhya steeled herself, picking up the cold, dead finger and taking the slipping the ring off it, curling it into her fist so the cold metal bit deep into her skin. After another moment, her self-control gave out and she retched once again, her throat dry and burning. Suddenly the air felt too close in here, pressing in on her, and Rhya badly needed to get out. The whole world seemed to sway, threatening to cascade in on her, until she stumbled outside, blinking owlishly in the light and falling to her knees once again, pressing the heals of her hands over her eyes.

 _Dead_. They were not here because they were all dead. Most likely by the hand of those other ones, the Dead who had risen again, at Chlorr’s command.

And if they were Dead, could they too not come back? Wouldn’t they too be enslaved by Chlorr?

 _Ah, but what is slavery really, little girl? All must serve, in their time. They have merely put their worthless existences to a better use_. _The weak serve, and die, and serve, and the strong… the strong survive_.

Rhya clenched her jaw and shook her head to shut out that thought, which had seemed to punch its way into her head from she knew not where. When she realised she was still holding the ring, she slipped it into her pocket, alongside the brooch.

She sat there for a long time, simply staring out at the deserted camp. All her tears seemed to have dried up, and she felt empty, hollowed out. This didn’t feel real. Surely this was a nightmare, surely she would wake and be in her mother’s arms, or asleep next to Kethra in the old camp, her sister waking her by fidgeting and complaining about Rhya stealing her blanket. _Surely it had to be so, for this… how was this possible? They had been promised land, life, not death, not this, never this_ ….

She knelt there for a long, long time, as the wind blew about her, the thunder and the lightning a constant rumble and flash on the western horizon at her back.

Finally she got to her feet, weary once more. She had missed only a single night of sleep, but she felt now as though she had missed a thousand; she was so tired, so ready to simply lie down and never wake up. But there was one thing she had to do, one thing that could not wait any longer. For though there were no bodies here - and she had an awful suspicion that she knew _exactly_ what had happened to them - there was one, just where she had left him.

She could still give Thelen the final rites; there was nothing to wait for now that there was no one left to explain to.

He lay right where she had left him. She knew that was the greatest thing she could hope for, with what she had seen the night before, but she realised she had still hoped, in some part of herself, that he might have risen by the time she returned to him. That he might be alive after all, by some strange twist of fate, or quirk of magic. Rhya really didn’t know what was possible or impossible anymore.

But nothing had changed. Thelen lay still and silent and pale, save for the dried cascade of blood down the front of his clothes, from the ugly gash where his throat had been cut from ear to ear. She kissed him on his forehead Charter mark once more, now just a dead imprint on his cold skin.

“Sleep now, Thelen” she said, as she laid him out carefully in front of their wagon. He looked so young, like that. She stood back, and let the first marks come. “And may the Gods welcome you to the City of Light in joy in the bright morning.” She couldn’t remember the rest of the farewell she had been taught at the Temple, but this would surely be enough, when combined with the Charter’s cleansing fire. Reaching the Charter was strangely difficult - something in her seemed to scream and writhe in protest, for just the briefest moment, and the marks came with less control than usual - but the flames caught at last. When they did she closed her eyes, feeling the heat on her face as the fire raced along his body, consuming with such scorching heat that in another minute, there was nothing left but ash.

She sighed. The smell of ash, of burning bodies, made her think of Lerian, and of the war. They had come here to save themselves, but they had never known what they were heading to, had been so blinded by the promise of a better future that they had trusted too much, trusted and trusted until they had been led blindly into their own destruction. But what manner of people would do such a thing? She clenched her hands into fists, for suddenly she knew what evil truly was, what it looked like.

Yet still, she found as she tried to fix the people who were responsible in her head - the better to fight them, the better to defy what had happened - the knowledge seemed to slip away like sand. _Perhaps_ , she found herself thinking, _if she could be like Chlorr… Chlorr was powerful, she was strong, and nothing could hurt her_ … Rhya’s heart twisted, sending spasms through her. _The others, the weak ones would all burn, and Rhya herself would burn them all and laugh gladly as she did it, all in the service of Chlorr_ …

The next moment she realised the direction her thoughts were going in, and the realisation filled her with sudden terror. _Those thoughts again_ … they had not been her own, but they had edged into her mind so easily - as if they were there already - that she had no idea of how she could have prevented it. She was just thinking about this, when there came a shriek, shattering the silence.

Instantly she was on guard, already reaching for the Charter.

For a long, endless moment, nothing happened.

Then a creature sprang out from wagon, a twisted, misshapen thing, impossibly fast and strong. She was ready though; she flung a ball of flame at it, causing it to emit an unearthly howl, its head erupting in sparks as the Charter magic ate into it and it stumbled back.

 _“No_ …” The word slipped from her mouth almost without her noticing she was speaking aloud as more of them came for her, Dead creatures in tattered Indigos. Just like the ones from the night before. That still _almost_ felt like a dream, some terrible dark nightmare, or it would have if Thelen was alive. Even though she had just burned his body, her conscious mind had still not quite acknowledged that the horrors of the night would not burn away under the light of the sun, scattering from her head like birds when morning came.

This, though. This was very, very real.

_Is it? Are you sure it’s real? Maybe this life is all a dream. You think you know, but you don’t. Chlorr would tell you, that there is more to life than this weak, cruel world of suffering. Why don’t you go to her and find out? She would forgive. You could be like her, you know._

_…Stop it!_

_Or you could choose death_.

She dodged and swerved, and fought, as much to tear away the thoughts that kept intruding into her mind as to save her own life. She was growing tired, though, as Dead creature after Dead creature stumbled and shambled or ran with a terrible loping speed into the clearing where the camp had been.

 _There are too many of them. What chance do you think you have? You could have done well, if you had walked the same path as Her, little girl, but instead you choose to die_?

“I choose to _live_!” screamed Rhya aloud, as a creature that had once - recently - been a woman lunged at her, trying to bite at her leg. She sent a ballooning cloud of Charter fire at it, setting alight the grass. She hissed with pain as the flames caught her trouser leg, beating at it to put it out before it burned her skin. She cursed through her tears, though the pain brought her a little more clarity, bringing her back a little closer to herself.

Still, her Charter magic was growing wild, erratic, and that made her nervous, fear crawling up her throat. She looked around. The edge of the forest to the north west of her was overrun, it seemed; she supposed if Chlorr had been leading these creatures into battle, they had won, for they seemed to howl with triumph, still filled with bloodlust. More appeared every second, flooding into the clearing, and there could still be many hidden by the trees; a whole army. A whole people, or what remained of them.

The eastern corner of the clearing was empty, though, and if she could flee into the forest there… she ducked under a wagon, only to be met with a grinning face, its mouth too wide as it reached for her with a hand stripped of flesh, and she screamed and flung herself out the other side, pressing her back against the wagon as she tried to catch her breath. Already, she was growing tired, and if she didn’t get out of this soon… she frowned, a Charter spell already building in her hand.

A scream, as a creature flung itself out before her.

Rhya prepared to cast her spell, it was a good angle, she could burn its face clean off…

She let the spell fall from her fingers, with a small gasp, everything leaving her mind all at once.

Save for a single word. 

 _Mother_ …?

In the moment it took Rhya to recognise the familiar face - _much changed by death, but so, so familiar_ \- the creature was close enough that she could see the place where her mother had skilfully darned her Indigo at the shoulder, the grey in her hair, the little triangular scar on her temple where she had been pushed to the curb as a young student, protesting back in Lerian. That had been another war, but, Rhya realised, it had fed this one. War was never far away in the south, and one led to the next, on and on in an endless cycle, leading to…

Her eyes widened, as her mother - _no, the thing, the creature that was trying to kill her, for thinking of it that way was the only way Rhya would live_ \- reached for her, a cruel parody of affection. Yet those teeth were too white and the mouth too wide, where the lips had been peeled back. They were stained with blood, too, as though she had used her teeth to tear into living flesh. Rhya shuddered, and cried, but carried on looking. The flesh was stripped from skeletal fingers, by grasping even when the bone was exposed, driven by some terrible compulsion.

 _Ah, but what would you do to bring her back, little one? She could live again. They all could. Chlorr knows. She did this. Go to her, and she will tell you the secrets_ …

“No!” screamed Rhya again. “She… she did this!” she repeated. That was the part she had to remember, to fix in her mind. It had been Chlorr that had done this. _Her fault. Her fault, her fault_ …

Just as those fingers tangled in her hair, she ducked, screaming, and wriggled away below the wagon just as the creature that had been her mother loomed over her.

Rhya took a deep breath, that instant seeming to stretch out as she lay under the wagon, looking up. Her Charter fire was within reach, the spell prepared.

All she had to do was use it, let the marks go. She could burn it, she could save her own life. All she had to do was release the marks, aim them at the grey skull-face that she had once known so well. It would be easy. She could see that as surely as she could see the Dead creature that had been her mother get down on its knees, with a terrible, leering grin, beginning to crawl to where she lay under the wagon.

 _But that face… it was so familiar, so human… surely there was something left, surely if she harmed her own mother she was just as much of a monster as_ …

She couldn’t do it.

Rhya gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry, Mother” she whispered through her tears.

She aimed upwards, away from the creature, and let go at last.

The wagon above her exploded into flames; at the last, she had sent her blasting spell upwards, into the wooden underside. Still, the thing reaching for her was thrown backwards, stumbling and screeching but unharmed, skeletal joints clicking horribly as it dragged itself inevitably up again.

Rhya could see it advancing through the flames and the tears that blurred her vision, and with certainty that burned worse than the hot ash falling on her, she knew that she had to get away. Reluctantly, she tore her eyes from the grotesque creature that had been her mother. She must think of it as an enemy now, she knew, a mere monster.

It was _hard_ though. She frowned, and craned her neck to the side, peering through the gap on the other side of the burning wagon, checking that the coast was clear. She had bought some time; she hoped only that it would be enough. The creature screamed as the ground about began to ignite, as the tank of kerosene in the wagon exploded with a searing fireball, heat rolling off it as it rushed upwards into the air.

Rhya screamed too, as pieces of burning debris fell on her, stumbling and falling into a roll to put out the flames. Even now, she felt sick with guilt, she couldn’t look at the creature. She wanted all of this to be a nightmare, _but perhaps to wake up she must die_ … She rolled quickly out of the way; the corner of her jacket, and her Indigo was on fire, and she beat them out even as she sprang to her feet once more, tearing all her exhausted muscles anew.

For a moment, she simply stood there, adrenaline coursing through her even as her burned skin smarted. Then she was running, her legs carrying her through the path she had cleared, to the edge of the forest. There were more of them, and they were behind her, but she didn’t stop to look back; she merely flung herself onwards, branches cutting at her skin and tearing at her clothes. She nearly twisted her ankle once as she splashed through a shallow forest river, the rocks loose and slippery, but she merely fell to her knees, biting back a cry of pain, and carried on.

Soon after, she realised that there was no one following her anymore, yet still she carried on.

 _Why carry on? Turn and go back. She’ll find you eventually. You’re just lying to yourself if you think any different_.

She bit down on her lip to drown the thoughts in pain, real, human pain. Not that she was lacking in that; she was bruised and scratched all over,burned, and her whole body ached with exhaustion. She was hungry, too, she realised; she could not remember how long it been since she had last eaten. She passed a thicket of bushes with what looked a little like the mulberries that grew in the countryside outside of Lerian, but really she had no idea what they were. As long as they weren’t poisonous, she didn’t really care, as she stuffed a handful of them greedily into her mouth. She chewed, and reflected that she perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad even if they were poisonous.

After all, dying by eating poisonous berries in the forest might well be a better end than what would surely await her otherwise.

Still, though she felt a little sick - perhaps just with fear, and exhaustion - the berries seemed not to harm her, so she picked up some more, wrapping them in the folds of her jacket, which she had taken off in the humid heat of the forest. After a short time though, they, too, were gone, and Rhya was hungry again, but there were no more berries. Yet even hunger was better, she supposed; something to occupy her mind with, a natural, human thing.

For when she wasn’t thinking of that, one thought only kept circling through her mind; _could any of the others have survived?_ She didn’t see how they could have - not if they had been in the camp, and besides, without Charter marks they would be defenceless against Chlorr and her Dead.And yet Rhya was alive, by mostly chance, _and so perhaps_ … It soon became clear, though, that she had no way of finding out that didn’t involve returning to the camp.

 _Well? Why not return? She is waiting for you there. There really is no point in resisting, not when she’s so strong_.

Neliya’s ring and the brooch Tandah had given her were still in her pocket, she realised. Impulsively, Rhya slipped the ring onto her finger. It was a little too large, but she spun it around fitfully. It brought her little comfort; it was not enough. She clasped the brooch in her hand until the metal bit into her palm once again, her mind creating images of Tandah’s dead face, Neliya’s eyes burning with awful fire, her family’s grinning dead faces with mouths stretched too wide to rend flesh with her teeth, hair coming out in clumps from the rotting flesh of her scalp. A hand, reaching out for Rhya… hands on all sides, with bone gleaming shiny-white through decaying flesh.

 _If you resist, you will die, child. But if you return, Chlorr could give you great gifts, great power… she survived, and you could too_ …

Rhya shuddered and retched and cried as the long, long day wore on to evening, barely able to fight anymore. Names kept running through her head. _Tandah… the same must have happened to her, too, and all the rest of her party. Rhya’s own family… Thelen, and Neliya and Rhin and their baby who was too young to even have a name and now would never have one… Kethra, Massin… Mother_ … she wondered if even Varleigh had met the same fate. She supposed that Hedge had been part of this too. For how could he not be? Varleigh must have been taken for teaching children the Charter, Rhya realised dully, though now the ocean of guilt filling her was so wide and deep that she felt nearly numb, worn out by pain. Or perhaps he had died on a Charter stone, like Thelen. Still, it made no matter; surely he was dead. _For how could anyone fight them and live?_

_They could be alive though. Turn back, go and see. Or would you leave them behind all over again?_

_Are you that cruel?_

That voice that was her own in her head, and yet somehow not her own, was persistent, and it was all she could do to drown it out.

Eventually she lay down on her back at the foot of a tall tree, her vision spinning and blurring a little as she looked up at the canopy above. She didn’t recognise this tree - it did not grow in Kalarime, as far as she knew - but its leaves were quite beautiful, she thought vaguely. Almost star-shaped, cut out in green-black silhouettes against the grey, cloudy sky.

She was not sure how long she lay like that. Perhaps she fell asleep for a while, for when she came back to herself, it was with a surge of panic, like waking from a nightmare.

She could not remember any dreams, but, she supposed, it could barely be worse than the reality.

She pulled herself to her feet and carried on.

_Why do you carry on? Go back. Chlorr would welcome you, she would teach you…_

_No. No she wouldn’t. You’re lying._

_Lying? No, it’s you who’s lying. You’re lying to yourself_.

 _No… she doesn’t want to… teach_ … Rhya had to think for a while. It was getting harder and harder to resist the thoughts pressing in on her mind, as her steps began to drag and the sky to darken to stormy twilight once more. _She… just wants my blood. That’s all anyone ever wants_.

Her head was so full of the battle between that strange voice - yet it was her own voice, that was the thing that frightened her most - and her will, that she didn’t notice the low trench in the ground until she was stumbling into it. Mostly covered with a drift of leaf-litter, it was about a foot deep and about the same across, extending in either direction. She stayed kneeling after her fall, squinting up the low hill that rose in front of her. _What was that at the top? Surely it couldn’t be a house?_ Its dark bulk seemed to loom over her, _but surely it must simply be some shadow of the trees… or if not that, then surely it must be full of enemies, who would kill her, use her, take her back to Chlorr_.

 _Yes, go back to Chlorr. She is strong and you are weak. It is your destiny to die so that she may live. You must know that, little girl_.

“No” she said again, though now her voice was cracked and broken. “No, I can’t… I have to…” she pulled herself up. _I must survive, where they could not. Even if none of the others survived. Especially then. I owe them better than to simply die now_.

She couldn’t get the words out, but she found she could lever herself upright, and then she could walk. She could put one foot in front of the other, no matter how slow she was, and she did, step by step, through the grand gate and up the path. The house looked like a single dark edifice in the dim light of evening, but she had not the strength to cast even the smallest Charter light.

She was only able to open the door - which was unlocked - and walk a little way down a corridor to a high-ceilinged, galleried hall, before falling to her knees once more. The next moment, she had curled up on the hallway carpet, and fallen into a deep, deep sleep.


End file.
